


Soundproof Box

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Dark, Disturbing Themes, M/M, Violence, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:42:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jared's mother dies, he buys an old, old house far away from his childhood home. Alone and introverted, always thought to be too weird, the ghost living in the house is Jared's only company. Jared doesn't exactly mind -- turns out Jensen is just as weird, if not weirder. Oh, Jared <i>likes</i> him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please consult [THIS POST](http://viviansface.livejournal.com/64061.html) for A/N and an additional warning. Beware though that it's a spoiler that reveals the ending, so go check it only if you really feel like you need to.
> 
> Written for the spn_j2_bigbang over at LJ. There's some wonderful art -- check the art masterpost [HERE](http://ar-richardson.livejournal.com/90143.html).

 

 

  


 

_“Death is not the end. Death is the credits rolling. The movie was over a while ago.”_

 

Jared buys it with the money his mother leaves him.

Ever since the moment he chooses it, it’s all about the house. At first, it seems like he didn’t actually buy a _house_ , per se, rather a collection of cracks in walls.

One good look from where he stands on the driveway, he knows it’s practically a disaster. The windows on the upper floors have been shattered, he is one hundred percent sure that all the doors creak and the front door can’t be closed properly. But it looks spacious, and it’s far away from where Jared used to be and what he used to have.

Strange, to think of himself as an orphan. As he stands there with an old heavy suitcase in his hand, rows of cardboard boxes at his feet, it’s with the knowledge of _I’m not a mama’s boy because I’ve got no mama_. It makes life feel somewhat funny.

Jared is in his twenties, year after year went by and he has never felt different up to this point. He has a bottle of his mother’s perfume tucked in the deepest curve of one of his bags but he knows that while it would smell of fruit, it would never sufficiently bring her back. He is, despite everything, okay with that. The bottle is more of a memento than anything.

He likes new beginnings. And the house has a large backyard, trees standing in rows, grass with yellowed sun-kissed patches stretching out for yards and yards. That’s good for a new beginning.

Jared likes it, even. Once he gets electricity and cleans the raindrop-stained windows, once he throws out the old mattresses and spends an entire afternoon throwing out old beds as well (then spends the evening removing splinters from his fingers, one after one and hissing quietly with a wild, joyful expression on his face), he thinks… he thinks it might become a home.

 

 

Homes are difficult to build, though, and they require money. Getting a job is necessary – even though he still has some money to his name, it’s not much. It’s enough to buy some paint but he needs food and all that other stuff he tends to forget about sometimes.

Jared has never had a real job, and the only thing he’s good at is reading; of course his steps lead him to the local library. After everything that’s happened, his mother’s death and the moving, it’s another bit of luck when he actually gets it. The lady he speaks to, one Ms. Rhodes with raven-black hair and a smile that tries really hard to be genuine, tells him he’s hired right after the interview and doesn’t complain when he requests a later starting date at the library so that he can finish up moving in.

It’s a very dream-like experience – buying the house, getting the job he wants, being afforded a few days off. Maybe it’s the small-town mentality, people wanting him to like it here, but it still feels surreal.

Ms. Rhodes grants him a week off before his starting date, and it’s one of the busiest weeks of his life.

Jared makes it so so that he doesn’t have to think about eventually meeting his colleagues, about morning and afternoon shifts and about having to leave the house.

He starts with the basement. There’s an old treadmill and other things that the family, whatever happened to them, never took care of, old unused pots and a fake Christmas tree covered in dust. He keeps it all there because he likes the lived-in sense of it and besides from storing a few of his own things there, he doesn’t move much.

The first floor takes him all of two days to clean. He doesn’t like the walls, one of the rooms being lime green, and so he repaints them to a solid, basic white. There is a fireplace he needs to clean out, and to his disappointment, there are no family pictures shelved on the top. The other rooms are messy as well, chairs and tables draped over with pieces of cloth. As much as Jared hates vacuuming, he spends minutes upon minutes doing it, but he doesn’t curse himself for buying such an old big house, not even once.

He keeps humming to himself, almost cheerful, melodies he thought were long forgotten to him.

Towards the end of day two, he finally makes it to the room the furthest from the stairs. The walls are a nice soft pink, some of the paint peeled off thanks to all the time no one noticed it or took care of it. There’s a tall mirror, covered in dust just like everything else in the room, and Jared whistles one of his melodies while cleaning it. He rummages through the closet and the shelves, but except for an old paperback copy of _Rebecca_ , the shelves are mostly empty and invaluable. He finds a doll with one missing leg under the bed and decides to keep it.

He spends the rest of the week inspecting the second floor, which turns out to be a complete disaster. This is where the windows have been broken into pieces and the floors are covered in dried leaves and bird shit.

The only exciting thing about it is the dead bird he finds in the corner of some room, hiding behind a heavy ottoman. Jared once heard about a lady watching as a bird hid on her balcony for an hour while a bigger, predator bird sat on the balustrade before giving up.

Wrapping the cold dead body in newspapers, he imagines a situation like that and thinks himself to be the quiet observer, the one who just keeps watching as death unfolds in front of him, inside of him.

He considers the bird to be a good omen, though, and he throws it out only with a heavy heart.

Jared is sick of the four walls smothering him then and spends his Saturday in the garden. It’s surrounded by a short fence, easy to climb over, as the house’s property stretches out a few hundred yards. The small space within the fences is the one where the flowers used to be, wild with colors. Everything is dry and dead and Jared takes care of it all, only taking small peeks at the tall trees that hover behind the fence.

On Sunday, the last day before he starts working at the library, Jared quietly enjoys a glass of cheap boxed wine on the patio, the old armchair he carried out from second floor creaking balefully each time he moves.

As he showers before bed, he murmurs to himself under the hot stream of water, introducing himself over and over in preparation for the next day, trying to sound cheerful and enthusiastic, bright. He acts out different scenarios, tries to talk himself into liking the fact he has a job now even though it was always his now dead mama that took care of the finances.

Barefoot, he then moves to the room with the soft pink walls he has chosen for himself, and slips underneath the cold sheets.

He doesn’t ever manage to warm them up, but that’s okay, because eventually, he falls asleep anyway. It doesn’t matter that he has to stare at little stars that glow in the dark installed into nonsensical constellations, glued to the ceiling. This must have been a girl’s room, Jared thinks, well, he knew from the very first second, and he smiles to himself.

She might be dead by now, for all he knows.

 

 

The alarm is supposed to go off at six fifteen, but Jared has been awake since five fifty-nine.

Jared’s stomach is in an anxious knot, but then he tells himself that many years ago, he was able to break a kid’s bone after he mocked him, and then scare him off with a real spider he caught by putting it on the idiot’s face, so surely he can do this.

First days are always the worst, is all.

Car- and bike-less, Jared leaves the house fairly early, wrapped up in an old hoodie to protect himself from the morning chill. The bus stop is a few blocks away from his house – at the end of the lane, the house he bought is now the only one inhabited, no one is interested in a bus stop around here. The other houses are ruins standing to guard the street, empty. The town itself is a small one, a larger village almost, with three bus stops in total.

The place is lovely and Jared likes how secluded it is, even though secluded places tend to brew rumors, but he can tell it must have been full and bright at some point. Everyone moved on to larger cities, abandoning their homes. One of them is Jared’s now.

Jared’s shift at the library doesn’t start until nine, but he gets there earlier because he supposes that meeting everyone will take some time.

He’s nervous and it’s somewhat difficult to admit this to himself – he has only met the woman who runs the library, or rather, owns the old building, but she straightforwardly told him that she’s not around most days. He’s alone and it feels like the first day of school.

It doesn’t help that he doesn’t even know his coworkers’ names, which gives them an advantage – but even if he did know, he wouldn’t be able to look them up. Back at his house, he has no stable internet access at the moment, and he didn’t think to care enough to fix it.

So, before he enters the library, he brushes his sweaty palms against his jeans twice to dry them in case handshaking will be involved, just like a school-boy would.

The nicest thing about small local libraries is the smell. With the big ones, the smell of old books and pages upon pages somewhat fades. People sitting by large tables with their coffees overwhelm Jared and those smells stand out, covering the other, much more pleasant scent. The one that still lingers here – Jared is not even inside yet and he can already smell it. He breathes in and somehow, it helps him with courage.

Everything in him is pulling at him to go to the actual library first, to see the books, but he makes himself approach the office’s door and knock twice. The first time doesn’t count, it was barely audible, just a brief contact of trembling knuckles against old wood.

A man in his twenties, much like Jared, opens the door and smiles widely the second he looks Jared up and down. His hair is sand-like and he resembles a high school jock somehow, and where Ms. Rhodes’ smile wasn’t genuine, his is.

“Are you the new guy? I can tell you’re totally the new guy.” His voice is annoying, Jared decides immediately, but he covers it with a smile of his own. “I’m Chad. We run on first name basis here so unless you want to add me on Facebook, we should be good. Jared, right?” And indeed, he outstretches his hand to greet Jared.

Jared accepts the offered hand seemingly willingly and shakes it a few times before letting go. “Yes. Jared.”

“Well. Let me show you around our little kingdom.” Chad brushes past Jared still wearing the same stupid smile, and Jared could really do without all the melodramatic poses and looks. He tails Chad anyway, letting him lead them to the books; it’s what he’s here for, after all. “Gen is here too. We haven’t had a new guy in ages and even though this is a small thing, it runs serious office hours and weekends are a thing too, so yeah. There’s that. We just didn’t wanna miss you, I guess.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Jared comments, at a loss for anything else to add.

“Oh, indeed. You’ll see another sweet thing once Gen appears.”

Jared cringes. Why should he care at all? He doesn’t want to get involved in coworker drama; he doesn’t want to get involved at all. He wants to make some money and go back to his house and be alone – that’s why he did all this. At his very core, he doesn’t like people much.

Gen – Genevieve – turns out to be another twenty-something year old wasting her best years in this library, but even though Jared doesn’t like either of them, he has to admit to himself that he likes their enthusiasm. He likes books, too – they were often his only friends, and to see other people treat them with such love and respect makes this all better.

They show him around, which doesn’t take much time because Jared is a bright boy and he can memorize things easily, especially where system and processes are involved. Before he knows it, he’s sat by the computer.

“So, Gen is gonna stuck around for a while in case you need anything, just for today,” Chad informs him, shooting a quick glance in the girl’s direction before snapping his attention back to Jared.

The brunette girl nods and smiles. Standing up, she’s only a few inches taller than Jared when sitting down. He can smell her shampoo on her if he really tries to focus on it, or maybe it’s soap, or maybe it’s just her clean clothes. It smells fruity, a little bit like his mother’s perfume, and he immediately pulls back from her.

“Yup, correct,” she sing-songs, the dumb smile seems to be contagious because it’s dancing on her full lips as well.

“Also,” Chad continues without giving Jared a chance to speak for himself, “me and Gen here, we’re going out for drinks today and we thought we should invite our newbie along, so, you in?”

The idea of spending his evening with these two individuals is honestly sickening to him, repelling at best. He can just see them both doing shots and pouring poison down their throats, sneaking out for a joint by the backdoors. One of them would end up getting a blowjob or giving one, maybe it would be the two of them together, even. Jared doesn’t want to see it, their normalcy scares him.

He’d rather spend his time scraping old paint off rain-stained walls all evening. That is rewarding – watching two people trying to find some fun in a mass of bodies is just tiring.

“Um,” he murmurs, momentarily hating himself for not thinking of this beforehand. “I’m still not really settled in, guys, so I think I’ll do that tonight, if that’s okay.

“Sure, pal,” Chad says and slaps Jared’s shoulder harder than necessary in fake camaraderie. “We go out a lot, you can come along anytime.”

“And if you need help with moving in and stuff, which can be a pain in the ass, just let us know, ‘kay? Assuming you don’t know anyone in town yet we’ll be happy to offer a hand.”

“I’m seriously okay,” Jared counters, realizing how harsh his words sound a little too late. Quickly, he puts on a smile and looks from the girl to the boy and back. “But honestly, thank you. I appreciate it. I think I can handle it.”

“Okay,” Chad nods, easily satisfied. He hops off the table he has been sitting on, his knees mere inches from Jared’s face no matter how he tried to angle it. “Well, I’m off, fellas. Got some catching up on sleep to do.”

Genevieve walks around the table just to punch Chad in the shoulder, her slight blush almost invisible. “You’re lucky Jared’s here now.”

“You’re lucky, you’d have to put up with my hangover ass instead if he wasn’t,” Chad argues playfully and Genevieve rolls her eyes, but shoots a sideways glance in Jared’s direction anyway. He responds with a shy smile, unwilling to read her expression for what it is, which might just be a flirtation. He doesn’t like that, at all.

“I hate that you’re right.”

“You know me.” Chad winks in the perfect fuckboy way Jared always used to see on TV, so stupid and oblivious to everything that’s actually going on in the world. Jared is genuinely happy to see Chad wave goodbye and get out of the room, letting the door slam behind him. Even Genevieve cringes at the sound.

“He’s kind of an energy ball,” Genevieve comments, the blush prominent on her face as she crosses her arms across her chest. “I kinda catch it when I’m around him, but honestly, I’m mostly chill.”

She once again repeats that if Jared needs anything, she’ll be there. He does end up calling her over -- he doesn’t feel like handling any main of the stuff today and so he spends most of his shift walking around the library, picking up random books and skimming the pages, getting accustomed to the space that is now his work. It’s a nice library, he decides, even though it’s not overly spacious and it takes him barely five minutes to walk around without skipping any rows.

Despite that, he zones out soon enough and catches himself thinking about the soft pink room, and whether the girl it belonged to was a teenager, and whether she ever woke up to bloody bed sheets, whether there’s an old dark stain on the mattress that Jared didn’t notice.

 

 

Checking the mattress proves to be useless, there are no dark stains decorating it. Jared got excited for nothing.

Either way, getting home in the early afternoon hours feels so nice and relaxing he heaves multiple relieved sighs while walking through the rooms he has already organized. The sun is high up in the sky and it gives all the room a new dimension, makes them look larger and emptier, the shadows taller.

It already feels like home, so much so that he hangs dark red curtains in the soft pink room to officially claim it as his. The burgundy color looks good with the soft pink one on the walls, and Jared admires it for a few short seconds. The curtains seem to shimmer right in front of him, as if someone was running their hands across them in the same kind of admiration.

Jared is so exstatic and so relieved that he can now be alone in the dark of this beautiful old house he wanders up to the third floor for the first time. After experiencing the catastrophe of the second floor, he had been wary of exploring any rooms further, afraid he would be met with the same kind of chaos. But he can take it in now, he’s positive.

He finds the first perfectly, completely empty room on the third floor, he honestly has no idea what its purpose could have been. Without a table, or piles of laundry, or anything really, it’s impossible to say whether it used to be an office, a spare bedroom or just a room for everything. You know, the room where you keep a plastic bag filled with plastic bags. The room Jared hid a dead cat with its head smashed in when he was just a little boy. That kind of room.

At least there are no shattered windows and no bird shit to take care of. No weird smells.

Jared snickers when the next room reveals light blue walls. It’s strangely bright compared to the rest of the house, even though the house itself isn’t dark, not exactly, just living and breathing with its own strange shadows and corners.

Looking at the once bright blue walls, now barely powder blue in their fadedness, Jared can be certain that the family that lived here had a boy and a girl and stuck to gender normative colors like it was their lifeline. He’s glad he found the pink room first and decided to keep it – it feels like a rebellion towards the maybe-dead previous owners of the house. He hopes their rotten bodies are twitching in their graves.

The strange sense of disappointment he feels doubles when the shelves and the closet are just as empty as the ones in the pink room. No sort of memorabilia to tell Jared what kind of a boy used to sleep here or sneak out of the window.

Speaking of that, the window is the only thing that bares something original, something Jared could remember. There are two letters, perhaps initials, carved into the wooden windowsill. JA, it reads, and Jared looks out of the window while tracing his fingers along the bony lines of the letters.

J. Jared? Jack? John? Jim? Jonathan?

Jared murmurs every name starting with J that he can think of but every word feels empty, not right. Julian. Jasper. James. Jude. They all have the same nonsensical tone to them, they don’t fit any rhythm, it’s like Jared spits them out. He runs out of names then, and with a sigh, he sits on the windowsill, careful not to disturb the mark a long-lost boy once decided to leave here.

Because the view truly is magnificent. The room being on the top floor, there’s nothing shielding the sky, but it’s not just that. It’s cramped with rows of clouds varying in color, all dark and rainy.

The window is facing the house’s property, overlooks the trees and the grass that runs unattended and wild, a bush here and there, a bunch of dandelions scattered around. The trees start a good few yards into it, but even from here, they seem to swallow all light. They stand tall and close to each other and no matter how intense Jared’s stare is, he can’t possibly see what’s hiding in there.

He leans his forehead against the cold glass, miraculously not shattered, and shuffles on his butt so his side is pressed against the window as well.

He relaxes and lets his eyes wonder although he’s not really looking at anything, and for the first time since his mother’s funeral, Jared feels a weird, new kind of loneliness, the kind that seems to be a companion in its paradox.

Everything is so strangely quiet, as he has always wanted it to be, but it’s taking some getting used to, and he’s not quite there yet. The endless possibilities of an independent life are laid out right in front of him, not entirely out of reach, he just has yet to make a go at it. He could do anything. He could shatter this window himself, drive his fist through it, and although there wouldn’t be anyone to heal the cracked skin of his knuckles, there also wouldn’t be anyone to scold him or cringe at the blood.

His heartbeat slows, becomes a mere comforting hum in the cage of his chest. It’s comfortable, to be lonely like this. He wouldn’t mind, perhaps, sharing it with someone who is just like him.

Jared blinks and there’s a soft tap on the window. His eyes shoot open and focus again and for a second, he thinks he’s looking into bright green eyes and he is almost certain he can see a pale, almost chalk-white face.

He almost laughs at himself when he notices the green eyes are nothing but the crowns of the trees blurred by the first raindrops of what seems to be a soon-to-be-heavy rain.

There’s certainly no face lurking from behind the window.

 

 

Jared wakes up with his breath hitched at the back of his throat, a choked exhale sounding through the room.

Jared blinks and the silhouette he spotted with the corner of his eye disappears into thin air, the walls seem to swallow it. He blinks again and again, but he feels, he somehow knows that he didn’t imagine it, that for a short while, he wasn’t alone in the room.

He sits up in his bed and gets up, his already cold feet bumping against the hard wooden floor. It creaks as he walks around, fingers tracing the walls as if searching for craved words or dried-blood sentences left there for him by the unknown.

His walk around the house is dissatisfying. He imagines the screeches of dying victims and whispers of evil spirits, but this time, he knows for sure it’s just a fantasy. The house is quiet in itself, only responding to his movement by creaks, sighs of the wood.

The third floor is Jared’s last stop, he tells himself he made it up here just to make sure he wasn’t sharing the house with a raccoon or another lost animal, even though he knows the silhouette he saw must have been human many years ago. He drowsily recalls the sound that woke him up; he can’t but believe it was his own name being uttered out loud by an almost-invisible stranger.

He stops by the windowsill in that third floor room, the one that looked so bright during the day with its blue walls and is now drowning in shadows and unwelcoming moonlit walls. He absent-mindedly wanders across the carved initials with his fingers, wondering if this JA was the one creeping around the house, wondering if it was the boy or the girl.

He would like the boy. A wide-eyed boy with the same past as Jared. He would like a boy with pointy teeth and a quiet laugh to make him shiver in the dark.

Jared turns back into the room, ignoring the points of the rows of trees standing tall behind the window, and he sighs. It’s a dissatisfied one at first, but then –

He could swear his breath hits something, because he feels it backlash onto his own face in a warm wave, and so he stares right in front of him, intently, wondering if whoever there is can see him and is looking back. He could swear the moonlight catches on something otherworldly green before it dies out like filthy emeralds.

Jared retreats back to his room, but it’s with a heavy, heavy heart beating fast against his ribcage, and no matter how long he rubs his feet against each other or against the sheets, his bed remains cold for the rest of the night again.

He is thrilled.

 

 

To say Jared is excited for his second day at the library would be some kind of an understatement.

But no, don’t get it all wrong. In the morning, he genuinely wakes up feeling happy that he has to go to work – it means he’ll be home by early afternoon again and he’ll be able to spend it however he likes.

The work day itself goes by in a haze. Genevieve is still there lurking behind his back like the fairy godmother she’d perhaps like to be, fixing Jared’s occasional mistake, which makes him grit his teeth in sheer anger.

He listens to long litanies about the lack of proper and nice restaurants in this town, which eventually slips into Genevieve sharing boring stories from before she got her job at the library.

“I worked at Jim’s bar for two years when I was in high school,” she tells him, spinning on her chair next to Jared while he actually tries to do his job on the computer . He takes a deep breath to remain calm. “I smelled like oil and felt greasy all the time from handling french fries all day long since french fries is apparently the only thing the people around here recognize. Not to mention the fratboys who always ogled and stared at me.”

“That’s dumb,” Jared comments but he’s honestly not interested, he’s not even listening. He’s busy thinking about green eyes and strange reflections on windows, he’s busy thinking about JA.

In his peripheral vision, he can see her nod. “Yeah. No idea how I survived it for two years. Thank _God_ I managed to get this job after high school. Anyway, how did you end up here?”

If he could, Jared would laugh. He looks at Genevieve with the best sad face he can muster, which is mostly just his poker face mixed with some of his annoyance bubbling up to the surface. “Death in the family.”

“Oh. Oh, shit,” Genevieve mumbles and covers her pretty mouth with her hand. She looks genuinely sorry; it’s infinitely amusing to him that she would opt to back off instead of asking more.

This is the thing he can count on with normal people, with people who aren’t like him – they will fake compassion to look better in some stranger’s eyes rather than ask, was it an accident? Was it someone close to you? Did they kill themselves? Did someone kill them? Was it bloody? What happened with the body? Jared learned this skill only through observation, but the questions still burn red within him whenever something happens. The TV with its bloody news is the only one he can actually ask, and it’s not like it would ever answer him. It’s better that way, it doesn’t really matter _why_ you’re faking empathy as long as you try.

“I’m really sorry,” she tells him and her hand, oddly enough, moves from her mouth to rest on his shoulder. He jerks slightly but smiles to balance it out.

“Well, it’s okay now,” he says, and for once, it’s not a blatant lie but the pretty pretty truth. It is okay now, after all. “Moving here helped a lot.”

The house helps a lot. The soft pink room. The never ending search for dark stains and quiet marks the previous family left behind. The ghost helps the most – Jared is sure it’s there, it’s just a matter of catching a proper glimpse at it now. It’s a presence, however, that Jared is aware of, and it’s something nice to go back home to. _That_ is why he is excited for his shift to end, so he can stop thinking about the voices and the silhouettes, so he can hear and see them for himself once again.

Genevieve’s hand is still heavy on Jared’s shoulder. “Do you wanna go grab something during break?’

He has to bite back another laugh – he literally just survived a rant on how awful the food around here is, and even though he wasn’t listening, he sure as hell isn’t interested.

However, before blurting out a sarcastic response or a polite apology, Jared considers the girl and what he knows about her. It’s not much – his only knowledge of her is that she is “mostly chill”, which were her own words and those are usually not the opinion you want to accept without finding out if it’s true. She does sound nice, she is perfectly normal, just a normal twenty-something year old girl without much ambition, without ghosts to keep her company. Perhaps she’s lonely; perhaps she never got to have her walls painted in rose pink.

Jared doesn’t always play the honesty card, it’s almost like he saves it for special occasions, but loud Chad with too much energy isn’t there and Genevieve is calm. Genevieve is nice.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m your guy,” he tells her sincerely. He does mean this, too. That’s two truths in only a few minutes.

Of course, she will see the truth she wants to see. He might tell her he’s gay to prove it to her. She would feel superior for guessing right, because her dark eyes do widen in what she thinks is understanding.

But it’s that she’s nice. If she were a dirty girl, he would go grab lunch with her. He would be thrilled with a footsie game. He would want to hear the dictionary of absolute filth fall out of her mouth. He would lead her on, perhaps mercilessly.

But there’s no point with nice girls. They fall immediately. They blush after a game of footsies. Sure, they can cuss, but what is the point when it’s always impersonal? Nice girls do drugs and die and that is no fun to watch. They get too clingy, they listen to songs about heartbreak, they never forget. Dirty girls’ hate is mighty, but nice girls’ angst is unbearable.

“Oh, so are you like, gay? I wasn’t flirting or anything,” she says. Quite fascinating, that she would actually ask, Jared will bet his life that even despite her chill-ness her ears are burning bright under her dark long hair.

“Yes, I’m gay and introverted, so.” He shrugs and the movement finally makes her take her hand off his shoulder. “Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologize. Totally one hundred percent okay with me. Cool. Thanks for telling me.”

“No problem.”

Their conversation ends on exchanged nods and Genevieve finally leaves him alone, her need to impress the stranger spilling out in waves, she’s practically empty now. No more Mary Sue stories or so it seems – the only thing that scares Jared is that she will now want Chad to help Jared and maybe talk to him, guy-to-guy, and that would probably mean one more death. Jared would not be able to handle that man.

The big hand on the clock seems to move a bit faster after Jared is left alone, mostly thanks to his work and to the book he’s reading, _The Violent Bear It Away_ , which was returned earlier that day by an old lady who seemed to be strangely satisfied with it. Jared likes it; he bites on his nails while reading without even realizing it.

As Genevieve’s break rolls around, so does Jared’s end of the shift and he packs the very few things he carries around with him and tucks the book into his bag as well, in secret. He’s not sure yet, it’s more a subconscious decision, but he may never return it – the shelves in the rose pink room are, after all, painfully empty, and what’s better than to fill it with stolen things? Where to start if not with books?

His tempo is brisk as he gets off the bus and nears the old house, and he’s not even surprised anymore when he _thinks_ he catches a soft glimpse of someone standing up there on the third floor, probably in the empty, empty room.

Jensen’s stomach flutters, curls in on itself and he has to bite back a smile. Others would run, he thinks. He knows. But he’s special, he knows that as well.

If he has to run at all, he’d choose to run towards the ghost.

 

 

The attic seems to be a mouth agape in a yawn. The air is sleepy with humidity, feels almost physically heavy when Jared wanders up there. It’s your usual horror movie setup – most of the room is covered in dust and spider webs lurk in the corners, and there’s a row of boxes sitting quietly against the back wall.

Jared passes a surprisingly large roof window on his way towards them, his steps stirring the dust.

He places his own boxes with strange memorabilia, including his childhood collection of soundless rattles, near the window and sighing, he sits down on the dirty floor, staining his jeans immediately.

It’s because of the ghost, obviously. That’s why he’s here at all. He wouldn’t have thought of coming up here, not yet at least, but as it is now he spent most of his afternoon trying to think of something to bring up here. Normally, he would want to store his collection of eyeless dolls somewhere near him, but it was as good an excuse as any.

With his hands resting on his knees as he sits there cross-legged, he considers the boxes. They’re ordinary cardboard ones, much like his were, yellowed-out with age as the sun has stolen their color. He rolls his eyes at himself but reaches out for one of the boxes anyway.

The first thing he fishes out is a big book, a herbarium filled with old leaves and as Jared skims it, he finds inaccurate drawings as well. He flips back to the first page and there it is, his mysterious JA. _Property of Jensen Ackles_ , it says in a scribble, thin ugly letters of a first-grader. Blinking, Jared can’t believe he never thought of that name, because as he reads it out loud now, it sits on his tongue perfectly, it’s like hot chocolate with strawberries, sweet and warm and melting down your throat.

Jared hums, not sure whether it’s in satisfaction that it _is_ the boy, or sadness because he was just a child vandalizing windowsills and collecting leaves and plants. Jared runs his fingers across the dry petals, gentle not to break them, and he wonders how old they are. Keeping the herbarium next to him, he rummages through the rest of the box, hoping to find bird skeletons or tiny jars filled with dead bugs, something that would make it feel better, but apart from perfectly normal looking dolls and a pair of earrings, there’s nothing.

The next box reveals perhaps the greatest secret of them all. It’s filled with photographs, most of which tell Jared nothing. His eyes skip over them; he’s looking for a boy with wobbly knees, he’s looking for a boy with a book underneath his arm, bigger than his face. He finally finds him on a small photograph with a bent corner.

His knees are indeed skinny, and there’s a band aid stamped on his forehead. There’s a coffee stain in the bottom corner, covering the hand-written date, but Jared can recognize the number 79 and that’s all that he needs. The house towering behind the boy looks tall and majestic, much more wonderful than the one Jared knows now. There were no cracks in the walls back then.

That’s not where the photographs end. Jared watches Jensen grow up, watches him laugh, often alongside his sister that can’t possibly offer much now that Jared knows there’s someone better.

Jensen takes on some weight, his skinny-ness disappears, and the photos turn from black and white into color. Here Jensen is, shirtless, his pink whore lips widened in a smile, a flower behind his ear. Jared’s mouth waters, and even though he still has a stack of pictures to go through, he knows Jensen will soon disappear from them. He suddenly knows that he must have been murdered around this time, because those lips, those bright green eyes, those were to kill for.

He looks innocent even with filth underneath his nails and with a bruise blossoming on his collar bone. People like innocence and want it for themselves.

Someone must have drunk Jensen up.

Jared isn’t sure about this, but at least he’s proven right on one thing – Jensen does vanish from the pictures after a few more. The family shrinks around the kitchen table, they sit tighter together, but they can’t replace the bright boy. They can’t push the memory of him away, not even for the pictures, Jared can see the gaping empty space.

If this were the perfect horror movie, Jared would find newspaper pages in the third, very last box, that would tell him exactly what happened and when.

Jared doesn’t find that, but the box is marked with the beloved initials, somehow they have become beloved, and Jared’s fingers are hungry for it. The box is filled with junk and old clothes, but Jared goes through it all with sick precision.

He finds a dark blue shirt with the collar dark from dried blood, and he imagines the golden boy getting a nosebleed, and he imagines him tasting his own blood tentatively. And then, at the very bottom of the box, hiding in a curled ball of a plaid shirt, he finds old boxers, and even though it’s old and has lost color and firmness, mending it between his fingers, Jared can tell they were stained long ago, stained with preciousness.

Jared takes the third box with him, placing the herbarium on top of the filthy old underwear; he almost stumbles on his own feet, and forgets all about the box with his own collections.

He’s already on the steps leading down from the attic when a soft giggle flies through the room and the breeze originating from nothing, vanishing into nothing, plays with Jared’s hair.

 

 

Waiting a few days to see if the glimpses and little hints would go away proves to be extremely insufficient.

Because they do not go away. Jared feels strange coldness now in most rooms which keeps him awake, he spends a better part of his nights tossing around in the bed and staring at the ceiling, red-rimmed tired eyes glued to the corners of the room, determined on spotting the ghost.

There’s truly no doubt about it here. Jared can hear voices somehow, calling his name here and there. Once or twice, he finds his things where they shouldn’t ever be – his ID near the toilet, his shirts in the kitchen sink, he would have to be blind to not see the ghost is just toying with him.

One night, even, when Jared’s in the shower, even through the stream he can hear someone singing clearly, a familiar melody, maybe the Beatles or something similar, and he nearly slips on the wet bathroom floor he hurries so to get out of the shower. There are no smudged messages on the mirror, no other reflection next to Jared’s, Jared hasn’t seen the emerald green of Jensen’s eyes for days now.

During another cold night, he decides that if the ghost won’t come talk to him, Jared will have to be the one to take the first step.

It’s caving in, mostly, because it means that during his next shift at the library, he actually goes to dig up old newspaper articles. All he’s got is vague information – he knew Jensen must have died in the eighties, but he doesn’t know anything specific.

But Jared is good – good at blocking hungover Chad who has given up on trying to talk to him and now only moans occasionally about how much his head hurts, good at finding shit in archives. True, his nails take the punishment, he bites on them furiously till he draws blood on his thumb so he can suck on it, but he gets there eventually.

The article he digs up seems to be possibly the biggest disappointment of all at first. Jensen’s death never even made it to some bigger newspaper – his death is just a short article in the local paper.

 

**Two teenage boys killed in a car accident**  
April 29, 1988 | Danneel Harris, Staff Writer

_Shortly after 11 p.m. on Friday April the 29th, the police were called to a car wreck a few miles beyond the city limits. On Saturday morning, the police department let out the official statement that two teenagers were found in the car. One of them (Jensen Ackles, 17) was found dead. His friend (Jeffrey D. Morgan, 18), who was driving, died at the hospital a few hours later. The car seems to have gotten out of control as there was no alcohol found in the driver’s blood. The car was supposed to get off the road, roll over a few times and hit a nearby oak. “This is a great loss for all of us. They were both such sweet kids, Jeffrey was just supposed to leave for college,” said a friend of both families that wishes to remain anonymous. Jeffrey D. Morgan will be buried at the town’s cemetery. Despite the tradition, Jensen Ackles will be buried on his family’s property._

 

Jared patiently rereads the article, and then he rereads it again. For good measure, he also rereads it for the third time. He memorizes all the important facts, the date, and the names.

Jared is not stupid. He can put one and one together, it’s not college math – he doesn’t even considers that they were just friends. He imagines the filthiest scenarios just sitting there behind the library computer – Jensen with his mouth busy working on Jeffrey’s cock and they veer off the road. Jensen gripping the wheel and turning it, causing the accident. Had Thelma & Louise been out back then, Jared would say they wanted to end their lives together, as if on a run.

It was most likely their last summer together, with one of the boys having to leave for college soon. The summers here tend to be hot according to what Jared heard, sweat gathering in your lower back, it doesn’t even matter if you’re fucking or just hanging out.

Jared can just see it: Jensen sticking his head out of the rolled-down window and laughing. Wouldn’t this be the perfect moment to die? he’d ask, and his friend would nod, he wouldn’t doubt him. It would be their conscious decision, to end everything together, because the moon was high, the night was quiet, their car seemed to be the only car in the world, they seemed to be the only people alive.

It’s when he thinks about it like this that Jared gets jealous.

He wasn’t even alive when Jensen died, yet this strange sense of belonging overcomes him. The ghost is his. He wants to believe in the beauty of death, no matter what kind it is, but thinking of another boy near Jensen infuriates him.

Jared has never spoken to him. He has never seen his real face. All he’s got is a bunch of old pictures, time has eaten half of them alive, and he now knows where Jensen is buried. And really, he should have figured that out a very long time ago. He should have known when he saw the trees standing so close together, that they were actually guarding a secret.

One look at the clock tells Jared that it’s an hour and a half until his shift is over, but despite this, he gets up from his chair. He can’t sit around, now that he knows exactly what to do.

“Hey, Chad,” he says and perhaps it surprises them both as it is Jared’s first aatempt to start some kind of a conversation.

Chad perks up, looks up from where he’s half-lying somehow on his chair, head thrown back. “Yeah, man? What’s up?”

“I kind of need to leave,” he says, because this cannot wait, he needs to do this right now or else he might lose his momentum. “A guy is supposed to come over look at, uh, some electricity issues and he just texted me he can’t make it later.”

Which, all in all, is more words than he ever exchanged with Chad. He is too hyper to feel anxiety, though, he can barely stand in one place. He is eagerly anticipating a response and when it takes Chad more than a few seconds to muster an answer, he starts to grow impatient.

“O… kay. Yeah, sure, I can cover for you.”

“Thanks!” Jared isn’t sure he manages a smile, he tries for sure, but he’s out of the door before he can watch Chad’s face for a reaction, he doesn’t even take the library book he’s been reading with him.

It takes an impossible long time till he gets to the bus stop, till the bus arrives, till it takes him across the city, till he walks across those blocks to get to his house. He recognizes routine more than he ever has before and he wonders whether this means independency, having to move in precise patterns or otherwise you won’t even make it home.

Minutes and minutes seem to pass as Jared takes the stairs by two to get to his room, sweaty fingers leaning against the pink wall as he bends over to pick up the old cardboard box. He takes out the herbarium, treating it gently despite his hastiness.

He runs through the house so quickly he honestly doesn’t notice his collection of rattles scattered across his bed. Strange, how it’s never occurred to Jared, not even for a second, that the ghost might not be playing with him. He might be threatening him, promising death and torture, drowning and poison.

The only thing Jared recognizes in this situation is an equal. Somehow, he feels as invisible as the ghost. The one who would place rotten fingers on bookshelves to make them look prettier. The one who would scream for death till his lungs burned into ashes.

It is very easy to find the grave, even though it’s old and Jared can’t possibly imagine how the family could just abandon it. There is no epitaph marking the gravestone, it looks cold and is cold to the touch. The name, Jensen Ackles, and the dates of his birth and death were clearly once golden, but that, too, has faded to a dull yellowish color.

The grave itself is hidden between the second and third row of trees and the gravestone is small, as if they were truly burying a child with flowers still in his hair, not a young man who knew very well what he was doing.

When Jared kneels in the grass, it comes almost all the way up to his crotch. He’s way too close to the gravestone, Jared knows there is a coffin with bones right underneath him, he wonders what it would be like if one of the bones just pierced him all the way through, he would give his heart for the boy who once wore them.

He leans the herbarium against the gravestone. The book itself is brownish in color, old, older than the grave if nothing else, the flowers in it almost simply ash. Jared imagines there must have been flowers embracing Jensen’s grave at some point too, but they are nothing but food to serve the soil so at least it can go on.

“I thought you would like that back,” he says, but it isn’t until a few seconds later that he feels the familiar cold shift in the air, and so he repeats the sentence again. “I thought you would like that back, Jensen. I found it in the attic. Can you take it?”

Dumbly, he awaits a response where none comes. He sits back on his heels and plays with the grass with his fingers, pulling at it, ruining the simple beauty as one does.

“I read about what happened to you. I’m sorry you were left here alone.”

Jared doesn’t quite know what that feels like, to be abandoned; he has chosen this loneliness for himself – but, of course, he didn’t even suspect that loneliness would come with a ghost attached to it, and not only a metaphorical one.

“Maybe we could be friends,” he finishes and looks to the side, curious to see if there would be anything, anything at all to let Jared know that Jensen heard and listened. Once again, he gets silence in return.

He gets up then, his legs protesting slightly after kneeling like that for a few minutes, and he nods to himself. He wishes he could say more – for some reason, he truly wants to but it wouldn’t feel right now, not anymore. He said what he needed to and if he talked more, it might just be too much.

He spares one last glance at the herbarium as if he expected it to move, but of course, it lies there resting. Maybe he should have lit a candle. Maybe he shouldn’t have done this at all.

There’s a strange ache to Jared’s bones as he leaves the trees and retreats to the house. He feels old and tired, and lying down by the dead rattles is the only thing he can do.


	2. Chapter 2

Jared only gets very little sleep that night; it’s too hot in his room. Somehow, it’s so much worse than when it was cold. He considers changing the rooms but then he concludes that he brought this on himself by playing savior and friend to someone, something almost ancient that perhaps just wanted to be left alone. And so he falls asleep a few minutes before four and wakes up roughly two hours later, and for a split second, it feels like watery fingers are wrapped gently around his throat.

They’re soft enough to not make him cough or panic and they disappear only a few seconds after Jared’s breathing picks up as he opens his eyes, but he is almost certain they were there.

Jared more or less simply shrugs it off and gets out of his bed, shocked at how cold the air outside of his room actually is once he gets out of it. His feet tap down the stairs and towards the kitchen, and he is so, so tired, he feels ancient himself. Constantly rubbing his face, his eyes red, he tries to brush the sleepiness away, but it won’t go.

He ends up unpacking his mother’s coffee maker, the one she always used to make her cappuccino back when she still drank coffee, and he sets it up on the pastel-yellow kitchen counter. It looks obscurely modern in this house, but for once, he actually needs caffeine.

He rummages through the drawers even though he went through them back when he moved in and he knows fully well he won’t find any cups that belonged to the previous owners, definitely no cups that could have belonged to Jensen.

He picks one of the ones he brought with himself, a simple white one with a greyish crack near the ear, which he has split his lip on on accident a year or so ago. He took to it after that, as it seemed to be more than just an object.

Jared sits down with the coffee, sits down behind the old table he couldn’t bring himself to throw out because it fits too well, rosy flowers underneath fake glass, stained and pale. He taps his knuckles against the surface and sips on his drink, listening in intently until he hears the floor of the first floor creak, and he shivers, shivers so bad when he imagines Jensen walking around the soft-pink room. And he wonders, he can’t help but do so, whether it’s still his sister’s room in Jensen’s eyes, or whether it’s Jared’s now, whether he sees Jared in the bed and likes it much more this way. He wonders whether he took the herbarium, but he promises himself he won’t check until he gets back from work.

After finishing his coffee, he dabs his tongue against his lips, examinational, and cringes at the prominent taste of coffee it gets him. He washes the cup and lets it dry, pours himself a glass of water. It doesn’t help much, it feels like those soft water-like hands would clean him in a much better way, make him gag in the process.

He slips into another routine-pattern after that, gets dressed, braces himself for another day at the library, comforts himself with the idea of getting home early, earlier than the others at least.

He runs down the stairs and walks up to the front door, just about ready to walk out of it, when he hears another creak, but this time, it’s not on the first floor, it’s right behind him.

Jared’s breath hitches at the back of his throat, much like it did a few nights ago, and suddenly, he’s stuck just like his breath. He is dying to turn around, every inch of his skin is on fire, pores and cells turning around already ahead of him, eager and hungry, but Jared can’t. He is terrified, so terrified he might just die. He is terrified that the creaking sound was just the floor crying out in a goodbye, he is terrified that once he turns around, he will have to face an empty hallway, and he is not sure he could do that.

He does turn around eventually, of course he does; he would hate himself if just walked out now without making sure. His eyes are closed when he does so, though, and it takes a lot to actually open them. The black of his eyelids is comforting against the fear of a bright but empty room.

Eyelash by eyelash, Jared’s eyes finally blink open.

And there he is. The prettiest boy Jared has ever seen, standing by the stairs, his hand resting against the wall as if for balance, barefoot. He is alabaster and he is snow, he is desaturated pictures, he is cotton soaked in rain. The prettiest, prettiest thing, with wide green eyes and brown freckles and pink lips, dull but still there, still there enough to be admired and adored.

“You have a nasty habit of stealing books,” the ghost, JA, Jensen Ackles, the boy with flowers in his hair speaks up, and his voice is a melody, it’s a half-heard end of a lullaby, it carries across the room effortlessly, loud and clear and soft. Jared’s knees almost buckle, and he can’t decide whether it’s the voice or the sheer fact that _he is here_. The herbarium is lying on the stairs behind him.

“I didn’t steal it. I gave it back to you,” Jared responds, surprised to hear his own voice. It sounds scared. Oh God, he sounds like a scared little boy, but the truth is, this is most likely the most thrilling, the most perfect thing that has ever happened to him, and he doesn’t know how to react.

Jensen smiles, revealing two rows of perfect pearly whites. He crosses his arms across his chest and Jared can see it, he can definitely see how this boy could cause car wrecks. How others would willingly die for him.

He is shorter than Jared, only a few inches but shorter just the same. And he’s so deliciously dead, Jared can tell by the pale skin if nothing else. He can’t sense any sort of coldness, though, and it makes him think that maybe, this is a friendly visit, and his room getting hotter overnight might just mean kindness rather than anger.

There is so much to Jensen Ackles – he is standing a few feet away from Jared and it takes a lot not to move towards him. He makes the air shift in the best way; he takes Jared’s breath away, even though he’s simply standing there. The only thing missing is a flower in his golden hair, behind the peak of his ear. Jared can’t bring himself to look away.

“I didn’t mean that old thing,” Jensen smiles around the words. “I mean And the Violent Bear It Away. I mean Pet Sematary. I mean To Kill a Mockingbird, which, by the way, how did that one happen?”

Jared’s ears turn red despite his want to remain calm. “I work at a library.”

Jensen giggles, and that sound alone is violent enough, more violent that anything Flannery O’Connor could ever come up with, or so it seems. It’s a soft giggle, a one so much like what Jared wanted it to be, that it almost makes him lose balance and truly installs something comparable to fear in his chest, somewhere near his heart.

“You mean _the_ library? The one across town?” he asks in awe and with so much interest. Perhaps he used to go there, maybe he tapped his fingers on the table Jared works at waiting impatiently for his book, maybe he mindlessly brushed the spines of the other books while looking for the right one, and while his touch surely must have gotten lost in the hundreds of dozens other touches, it’s comforting to think Jared’s fingers have touched them as well.

“It’s the only one around here,” Jared explains, and he can practically hear a clock ticking in his head. Every word is a precious second. Soon, he’ll have to go catch the bus. Soon, he’ll have to leave Jensen in this house. Soon, so soon.

“You can check out some old de Sade books, if you’ve still got them there. I added my own commentary back then.”

“Of course you would.”

It’s out of Jared’s mouth before he can consider it or think it through. It’s almost too daring, but it’s also so easy to say. Looking at Jensen, it’s almost natural to forget that he is the boy who would read de Sade at fourteen and hide it underneath his pillow instead of a normal porn magazine. Jared can’t help but wonder whether his lover ever got him to read it out loud. Jared would give a lot to hear Jensen read about pain and sex and blood and torture. He is sure it would actually sound like a bedtime story from his perfectly shaped mouth.

Jensen’s smile freezes but doesn’t fall completely. “For some reason, I don’t mind you saying that.”

_Because we are the same_ , Jared wants to answer, but this time, he doesn’t dare to. It’s almost like he used up his courage and can do nothing now.

That’s, perhaps, why he says, “I have to go.” He drops his glance to the floor, but even like this, he can’t tear his eyes away from the ghost, he watches Jensen’s toes curl against the floor. Jared wonders why he’s barefoot at all. Did they bury him without shoes? Can he dress however he likes? Were his feet bare when he died?

“Of course,” Jensen says, but it’s barely above a whisper now.

Jared nods to himself, still somewhat speechless. He can’t bring himself to answer. He turns around much like he did a few minutes ago, and he doesn’t know, doesn’t understand where the sudden tiredness is coming from.

Their first conversation should have been longer. It should have been death and laughter, not gentle mockery and answers that avoid anything even remotely real. Then again – sometimes, when your dreams come true, you have to seek silence before you are ready to handle them at all. Jared feels like he didn’t quite know what he was asking for when he offered his friendship – it feels like he still isn’t quite ready for how beautiful Jensen is, isn’t quite ready for that honey voice of his, doesn’t quite believe this could be happening.

His hand is on the doorknob when Jensen speaks up again.

“You’ll come back, right?” he asks in a small voice, the visible pattern of sarcasm gone.

Jared turns around on his heels, and suddenly, he understands. He knows now, without asking, why Jensen’s family left and abandoned the little gravestone, why they sold their property and ran. It’s because Jensen was always here, silent, just a shadow without a shadow, making the floors creak here and there, changing the room temperature to his liking. He saw the pink walls, he saw the now-hidden dark stains on bed sheets, he heard all the conversations. Invisible. A ghost shouting into a soundproof box.

And then, perhaps, he finally figured out how to make himself visible. He could touch the hem of his mother’s shirt, he could slap his father’s back after a conversation. But his family didn’t want that. Maybe, in the pictures, they sat so tightly together so that no one else could squeeze in between and take up space.

They left because Jensen never has.

“I will,” he tells him and looks at him again, he can’t even imagine how important it is for Jensen to actually be seen again.

Jensen nods and his arms still crossed, he casually leans against the wall, rests his head against it as well. Through his jeans, he scratches his calf with his other foot, toes curled. He smiles, and Jared hates to leave.

 

 

The first thing Jared does after completely, unashamedly ignoring Chad’s talking, is sit his ass behind the computer and go take a look at any de Sade they have. He is relieved when he sees that they still hold an old edition of Justine from 1970, even more relieved – but not surprised – when he finds it’s in at the moment. Actually, he sees that the last time someone borrowed it was eleven months ago.

He snakes away with it during his short break, locks himself in one of the two bathroom stalls and lays the book on his knees.

This is, perhaps, the most appropriate of times, the most appropriate of places to read this.

He is not interested in Marquis de Sade – he’s outgrown him a long time ago. He read his books in secret when he was barely fifteen and then threw them away or burned them because he liked the ritual-ness of it, but ever since then, he’s lost interest.

His interest doesn’t lie in de Sade’s text, after all. It’s all in the scribbles made with a thin sharpie, perhaps, black, blacker than the printed words even. There are not a lot of them, barely ten, but they’re easy to spot and Jared gets them all.

 

_The word ‘prick’ makes me laugh._

(an arrow drawn here, pointing at, _‘pricked it and stopped the wound after he had drawn two bowls of blood’_ , the line wonky but deadly)

_British people all over the world snort in unison._

_On second thought, two bowls is a lot. You could paint Guernica all over again with it. Maybe. A smaller version. Why waste it when you can make art with it?_

(hand-written words covering the printed ones, overlapping in the most glorious of ways)

_I’m going to underline every word that’s got something to do with blood from now on._

(Jared checks. Every deviation of the word, including the word itself, is indeed underlined in the same thin sharpie)

_Fifteen year old girls. I’m fifteen…_

 

(and why are the dot dot dots so suggestive to Jared?)

It goes on, three more notes like this, frankly similar. They are not disgusted comments on the happenings of the book, it’s mostly – how would that sex toy work today? What if every monk in the world had to read this to clean themselves of sin? And at the end, I watched the German movie of this and it was more disappointing that the book.

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Chad tells him once Jared finally gets out of he bathroom, hiding the book behind his back like a child, hurrying to place it back where it belongs.

Jared laughs at the words, quite genuinely, it feels grotesque to hear someone address him like this. “Why would say that?” he asks, though, just in case Chad is serious and can somehow tell that yes, Jared has finally seen Jensen, hasn’t recovered yet. Maybe he’s been mumbling out loud about pink lips and pale skin and how much he would like to kiss and taste both. How much he would like for those bare feet to be wrapped around his waist as he holds Jensen up against the wall.

Chad just shrugs, though, completely oblivious. “You just seem quiet. More than usual, I mean. Did everything go okay with the electricity man?”

It _almost_ feels wrong to mock people who honestly seem to care.

“Yeah,” Jared nods. He manages to bite back that _sparks flew for sure_.

 

 

Jared nearly trips on his own feet as he basically runs home from the bus station. To his big surprise, he finds the house empty, almost abandoned. He calls Jensen’s name now that he knows he listens, he searches the rooms, but everything is quiet.

What a realization, and a late one at that, that this is all still a game. It even might be a dangerous one.

Jensen didn’t show his weakness that morning. He was barely searching for Jared’s, and he found it.

By saying he will be back, Jared wasn’t reassuring the ghost that he’s not afraid – he was simply telling him how important this is to him, and that of course, he will always come back, to search out old forgotten books and offer unwanted friendships.

Jared can’t take it back now.

Whenever he blinks, in that split second, he sees Jensen’s body, slim and somewhat small and very teenage-y, the white shirt too big on him. He sees bare feet and green eyes staring at him, and he can’t take any of that back. It’s forever stuck in his head, and Jared has never in his life been this attracted to someone.

No matter how hard he tries to get Jensen’s attention, the ghost is stubborn enough not to show, and no matter how hard he tries to distract himself with chores or reading or nail-biting, there’s always a few-inches-shorter, gorgeous boy hiding at the back of Jared’s mind.

He just won’t leave.

Brushing his teeth before bed, Jared stares into the mirror intently, so eager to catch a blurred reflection of Jensen’s gorgeous face, but he knows it’s a fantasy – it won’t happen, he knows. Despite their morning conversation, he is still just a toy Jensen can play with.

“I see you put my rattles back where they were,” he comments when he gets to the soft pink room and his bed is just neatly folded bed sheets and a puffed up pillow. Jensen must have done that, too.

It feels strangely alone.

Jared sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, hugging himself, head leaning against the old wall. This feels exactly like third grade felt – long nights and quiet betrayal, and yet again, Jared can’t tell who really did the betraying.

All the words he wishes to say are a literal pile stuck at the very bottom of Jared’s tightly squeezed throat. He doesn’t dare to speak up in fear of nailing himself into the corner even more, as if it isn’t enough, the way it is now.

Sleep comes to him, the perfectly normal temperature of the room slowly lulling him into drowsiness, and sub-consciously he curls up underneath the sheets, embryo-like, unprotected.

 

 

In Jared’s dream, the unplugged phone in the kitchen rings and keeps on ringing. It’s just a dream and he somehow knows it, but he jumps out of the bed to silence it, anyway. This time, his feet aren’t cold, and when they meet the indeed very cold wooden floor, he hisses under his breath.

Sleepy, even in the dream, he almost falls down the stairs, but he manages to hang on. The phone is still ringing when he gets to the kitchen, it sounds so loud Jared is scared it might deafen him completely.

The phone is covered in dust when Jared takes it in his hand and stares at the lime-green handle. After a second of hesitation, he puts the phone up to his ear.

“Hello?”

It’s a dream, but he still expects it to be Genevieve or Chad at first, they are annoying enough to call in the middle of the night. Then he reconsiders and starts thinking it must be his mother calling him from the afterlife, to tell him he fucked up, or to order him to do something he forgot to do during the day, all in a very loving, gentle tone, like she always used to, the same way that made him go fucking nuts.

It’s a different voice that comes, though, it seems to echo from very far away, and it takes Jared a few nanoseconds to place it as he’s only heard it once before.

“Are you awake, Jared?” Jensen asks and even though Jared can barely keep his eyes open, his heart is a stallion, beating hard and fast, impatient to burst out of his chest and paint the kitchen walls in a nice dark red.

“No,” he mumbles into the phone. “I’m asleep. Where were you when I got home?”

“I was right there next to you,” Jensen tells him patiently, but it sounds like he’s so far away, on the other side of the world. “Did you miss me?”

“I thought I would die.”

“Do you get attached easily, dear?”

“To people like you,” Jared admits, because after all, this is all just a dream and he won’t remember in the morning.

“People like me? You don’t know me at all. I’m just a ghost.”

“I do know,” Jared insists. “I do know you. I saw the pictures. The ones I found in the attic.” Jared closes his eyes because he is simply too tired to keep them open, and he leans against the wall, his face mere inches from the phone in the wall. “You’re like me. You like dead things. You _are_. That. You like collecting. You’re twisted, you must be, I saw it in your eyes. Your heart used to pump silent aggression.”

“I’m right here, Jared,” Jensen repeats, but this time, it does sound close. Because it’s a dream, nothing but a dream, Jared can feel it when Jensen rests his palm on his shoulder. His eyes shoot open. “You saw all that, huh?”

Jared nods, covers Jensen’s hand with his, and sighs. Still nothing but a dream. “We’re also different, though.”

“How come?” Jensen asks with a frown, he doesn’t like that, not one bit, Jared can tell. The moonlight seems to be drowning in Jensen’s emeralds. They look more alive now, alive with worry and doubt.

Jared hums, grips Jensen’s hand tighter. “You look innocent. When I _first_ saw the pictures, I thought you were just a boy. You look so innocent, Jensen, I would have been surprised to see your hands bloody.”

“Do you know better now?”

“I think I need to hear it.”

Jensen smiles, it’s a pitying grimace but Jared is accepting of it. “I don’t think I can give you that. But Jared, has no one ever told you that you look like that too?”

Jared gasps at this, he is suddenly very awake even though it doesn’t jolt him awake for real. Still stuck in the dream, the words echo through his head. It certainly doesn’t tell him that Jensen considers himself to be something extraordinary, but at the same time, that’s not the most normal thing to say. It’s difficult; it’s the most difficult thing in the world to remind himself that this is a dream. Jensen looks so innocent in the moonlight, a virgin boy who closes up his legs whenever there is a predator nearby.

The idea of Jensen is still just an assumption, after all. Another dream of Jared’s. All he’s gotten are a few glimpses that are not enough to create the entire picture. Jensen might just be a ghost turning evil over the years he had to spend alone. He might have been a normal boy, he probably was. The flowers in his hair were probably just because it made his lover laugh, and Jensen liked that, he liked lighting other people’s faces up. The car accident was exactly that, a car accident. Looks can be deceiving.

The lighting in the room changes abruptly, within a second the night surrounding them turns into a bright day and Jared lets go of the phone, its cord stretching out and the handle banging against the wall once, twice as it twists and swirls. The room is otherwise silent.

Jensen’s face changes right in front of him. One corner of his mouth goes up in a devious smirk, all of his innocence gone, and he easily fights his way out of Jared’s grip until his hand is free.

Once it is, he grabs Jared’s crotch with it, squeezes his soft cock, looks up at Jared through his eyelashes.

“If I’m a slut, why aren’t you hot for me?” he asks in a raspy voice, tilting his head. His other hand comes up to Jared’s throat and it’s not just soft liquid grip now, it’s a real palm pressing against his Adam’s apple. Jared wishes he could call this a nightmare.

He whines low in his throat, Jensen’s hold of his cock is almost too rough but he likes it anyway, can feel himself getting hard. Jensen’s face is only inches from his.

“I like you an awful lot, but you’re gonna have to try harder.”

Both of Jensen’s hands disappear and Jared blinks rapidly, doesn’t know whether to comfort his bruised neck or touch himself, comfort himself in a different way while cradling the pain spreading out from his throat.

He grows dizzy, the entire kitchen spins with him, and Jensen is gone for good, without a sound, without saying goodbye, not even bothering to play more games. Everything gets incredibly loud, Jared can hear seconds tick by, they tick in his head like giant bells, hit him in the temples every single time. And then, everything goes awfully quiet, it feels like climbing up a long row of stairs and thinking there’s another one left when there’s none. Jared steps into nothing. All sound disappears for a second.

Then, the phone rings again and when Jared looks to the side, he sees it’s back in its spot. His fingers are sweaty when he reaches out to pick up.

“Hello?” he asks, unsure and somewhat insecure, feeling his erection with his other hand.

“Did you miss me?” Jensen asks again and Jared rests his hot forehead against the dirty wall, his fingers squeeze the phone until his knuckles turn white.

Before Jared can stop himself, he stuffs his hand into his boxers and runs his thumb over the tip of his cock, imagines it to be Jensen’s hand instead. “I thought I would die,” he says in a whisper.

 

 

The dream, of course, is gone by the time Jared wakes up. There are two leftover things to consider, though – Jared’s hard-on squeezed in his boxers uncomfortably, and the feeling of general unease sitting on his chest. He wishes he would remember what the dream was about.

He’s lying on his left side, his left arm comically outstretched as if he was trying to catch something, or someone.

With his right hand, without even so much as opening his eyes at first, he pulls out his cock. His movements are lazy and soft, the morning haziness ever-present in the touch of his fingers.

The room is cold again and so are Jared’s limbs, the wetness and warmth of his dick feels nice against the freezing tips of his fingers, even though it’s somewhat unpleasant the other way around.

Ignoring that, he squeezes his fingers around the base of his cock and his lips part subconsciously to let out a deep breath. He remembers Jensen’s voice from that dream, but that’s all. He would easily bet his life on the fact that that is why he woke up sporting a hard-on like he hasn’t in years.

Jared can still feel the sour bitterness of sleep in his mouth and his fingers move lazily in slow patterns, but he fights to open his eyes at least.

They fall upon the burgundy colored curtains, drawn close by his own hands the night before. They make the soft pink walls look darker, it almost feel like they’re closing in on him, a deep shade of holographic pink. And he can tell that there are eyes watching him just now, staying invisible for their own benefit, their greens darkened by the closed curtains as well. It’s all so much darker in here when you know that the morning sun must be high up in the sky, bright and ever-loving for everyone else.

He works his cock, runs his thumb over the tip of it, moves his hips gently when the friction finally starts to be pleasant and he is forced to quicken his pace.

His eyes willingly search the room over and over again and he hates to bite his lip hard to prevent himself from asking out loud whether Jensen is in the room with him, whether he can see this, whether he knows that it’s all for him.

A silent moan escapes his lips and his hips jerk forward, thrusting his cock into his hand to get more, and the curtains seem to move as a single ray of sunlight falls upon an ugly crack in the wall before it disappears again. Jared smiles to himself, licks his lips.

An invisible weight falls on top of the bed, it creaks slightly and Jared feels the mattress move, but as he’s nearing his orgasm, he can’t tell if that’s still just part of whatever dream he was having or whether it’s real and he’s really not alone.

An old wound on Jared’s bottom lip splits open as he furiously bites on it, and it takes a heart and a half to not speak up.

Do you see me? he wants to ask, but instead, he finally brings his other hand from where it’s been outstretched and bites on his fist. Armies of ants march up and down his arm, the limb numb, the bite poking a log on fire. He must not talk, for some reason, he knows and understands this sudden law.

Nothing can be seen, the bed sheets are hiding everything, but Jared can practically feel the ghost’s eyes on him, intent on catching every detail he can.

Underneath the sheets, Jared’s toes curl and his muscles squeeze, he wishes he could have someone inside him, he wishes it would be Jensen. His hips keep moving forward until his back is arched and his waist is jerked forwards.

He wants to come, it’s the only thing in the world that could fix him now, and so he doesn’t have it in him to tease himself anymore. On any other morning, he would wrap his fingers around the base of his cock and leave them there for seconds, his orgasm impatiently waiting on him, _come on now_ , and he would hold it back for as long as he could.

He can’t do that today; he doesn’t even want to try, not really.

Jared bites on his knuckles when he comes and his eyes fall close, his moan is more of a relieved sigh finally leaving his body.

Breathing unevenly, Jared turns around and onto his back, the come-stained sheets rubbing against his hipbone, cold and uncomfortable. As he absentmindedly licks his just as stained fingers clean, he looks around the room. It looks and feels perfectly normal, there’s no invisible someone lying next to him.

With a sigh, he lets himself close his eyes again for a few more minutes.

Eventually, he dresses and gets ready for work, leaves the stained sheets in his room to change them later, or maybe not, maybe he’ll keep them until Jensen agrees to feel the crusty fabric against his ghost body as well, if he can feel such things at all.

“I’ll come back,” he tells the house before walking out of the door, and he doesn’t know himself whether he just wants to keep playing the game because otherwise his chest would feel hollow and cave-like, or whether he means it as a threat.

 

 

It might have been a threat, Jared decides while walking home from the bust stop in the afternoon, but it has changed since then. Right now, he feels like the most tired human being in the world, and his words are wishful thinking.

Truly, all he wants is for those to have been heard and for Jensen to be waiting for him. He wishes the previous day to be a cruel joke – it has been forgotten, after all. Jared would want to pull jokes like that too, if he only was in the position. It’s enough to be played by something otherworldly, though.

The house is as empty as it was the day before, though. Jared wants to scream when his eyes fall upon the hollow rooms and his ears are deafened by the complete silence.

Back at work, everything was too much. Genevieve’s voice was too loud, the people stopping by were too many and too stupid, all Jared wanted was to be alone. But by now, Jared’s alone doesn’t mean complete silence and being able to relax in an empty living room, it’s not not being bothered by anyone. Jared’s alone has long ago translated into Jensen.

With another sigh, sighing seems to be the only thing he’s doing today, he walks through the house, shredding the blazer he was wearing, putting down his bag.

“Have you ever heard about the spoon theory?” Jared says into his empty living room when he gets there, popping his knuckles in a nasty fashion, crack-crack-crack echoing around the room. He pulls at his middle finger when it doesn’t want to budge and is satisfied by the semi-loud crack that sounds through the air.

He’s not willing to accept the silence. He sits on the couch and stares at the armchair as if someone was sitting in it.

“You probably haven’t. Some woman wrote it. It was about some sort of illness she had. Her friend didn’t understand her, so when they were out for dinner, she used the spoons at the restaurant to explain how she had to cope every day.”

The living room door slams on its own accord and Jared smiles to himself. He can’t see Jensen, not yet, but he knows he’s in the room. He keeps his eyes glued to the armchair.

“She said, I only get about ten spoons a day. Everything has to be precise. One spoon is for dressing up, one is for getting to work, one is for surviving it… etcetera. You get the point. And she said, if I want to use up more spoons, I won’t have enough tomorrow and I won’t be able to function. I have to use a spoon for a meeting with a friend. A spoon for cooking myself dinner. I have to be really careful with my spoons.”

Jensen appears in the armchair, his knees brought up to his chest. He’s still barefoot, his toes are curled, peaking off the armchair’s cushion. Jared eats him up with his eyes, almost forgets how to breathe. Jensen’s face is lit up with interest and curiosity, it radiates off him, Jared wants to take him in his arms and never let him go. He could squeeze him as hard as he could and know that Jensen wouldn’t die. That’s more than he ever dared to ask for.

“So what’s your point?” Jensen asks, hugging his knees.

“I never got to use my spoons,” Jared explains. “My mother always did everything for me. My job at the library is my first real job. I have stacks and stacks of spoons, Jensen.”

Those green eyes darken when Jared uses his name, but they darken in the prettiest way. They seem to deepen like wells. Whatever creature could ever crawl out of them?

“And what’s your point?” Jensen repeats his question, a smile starting to pull on the corners of his mouth. Jared can see it as it’s being born, almost a giggle but now just a lopsided smirk, the realness of it bitten back.

“I don’t want to use them on my work,” Jared tells him, moving forward, sitting on the very edge of the couch so he can get closer. “I want to use them all on _you_.”

Jensen seems to consider him. He doesn’t hum or otherwise express it, but his eyes wander all across Jared’s body, up and down, they roam all over Jared’s face. Perhaps he’s searching for something that would prove Jared’s words, or maybe he’s simply trying to see him for who he is. Both options are incredibly scary, both could fail him completely. Jensen could still just laugh at the sentiment.

The ghost ends up moving from the armchair. He shuffles till his butt is on the edge of his seat as well and then he slides off the chair, sits on the floor and crosses his legs. Jared wouldn’t have to be smart to understand that the same is expected of him.

He sits opposite Jensen, crosses his legs as well. There’s barely two feet parting them, the only thing missing would be an old filthy Ouija board, about as covered in dust as the rest of this house.

The wide smile that breaks out on Jensen’s face is sudden and beautiful. “So are you ill, if you accept the theory as yours?”

Jared shrugs. “I don’t know. I might be.”

“Mysterious,” Jensen comments and this time, he does hum. Jared doesn’t know what to think of it, but if Jensen’s lasting smile is anything to go by, it can’t be that bad. “I like it.”

Without another word, Jensen reaches out with his hand, stops with his palm halfway to Jared, not laughing but playing along. Jared stares at it, wishes he could do palm readings, wonders what he would see if he could. The life-line cut abruptly and too soon. The tips of Jensen’s fingers are as pale as the rest of him, desaturated, but they almost look silver in this lighting.

Jared knows what’s expected of him.

He reaches out as well and presses his palm against Jensen’s.

It’s cold, which is the very first thing Jared notices, and he can now for sure say that they were Jensen’s hands that wrapped around his throat a few days ago, tempted to squeeze.

“We can be friends,” Jensen announces and it certainly shouldn’t make Jared’s world so much brighter. This is the cheesiest thing he’s ever done; sit in front of the couch on the fucking floor with his palm pressed against someone else’s. Perhaps there’s something poetic, though, that they’re not talking about death and illnesses and plague and murder instead. With a ghost, you could certainly do that – it’s almost special that they chose to do something else.

After all, Jared _is_ enjoying the touch, there’s no doubt about it. The coldness feels nice against his fingers, Jensen’s hand is really just a ghost, so indistinct against the firmness of Jared’s fingers.

“We can,” Jared agrees and he can’t help the smile that creeps onto his face.

 

 

Jared measures friendships by how well he can coexist with the person in silence. This usually failed marvelously within minutes because the other person could never stay quiet – eventually, they would speak up and annoy Jared away with their stupid questions or their need to spill out their stream of consciousness out loud.

Now, though?

He has been sitting out on the patio in that old creaky chair, reading (not really paying attention, though) for almost an hour and Jensen has been sitting silently at his feet, like a child, simply staring at nothing. Jared would ask, this must be how you’ve spent all your days since you died, right? but he doesn’t think that would be a good conversation starter. As much as he would like there to be no boundaries, he’s well aware that there are many.

This new friendship has been labeled as more than pleasant for long minutes by the time Jensen finally tugs at the hem of Jared’s jeans to get his attention.

“Can we talk?” he asks in a small voice and if Jared didn’t know better, he would think his shyness was genuine. The game after they first talked, though, taught him that ultimately, almost everything is a game and this is in fact a straightforward request of _I want to talk now_.

Jared nods and puts his book down without a word.

“What are you really running from?”

Here it is again, the running. It’s almost impossible to keep the answer hidden and to restrain from talking about deaths with Jensen looking up at him like that. Jared nearly has to look away in order to keep his ground.

“We’re not best friends yet,” he manages to squeeze out in the end.

He couldn’t possibly miss the wonder that flashes through Jensen’s eyes, and he likes to think that it’s part curiosity and part admiration that Jared, too, can play games if he wants to. Now to see if such a thing gets tolerated.

“Shame,” is all Jensen says, and then he sighs, as if actually breathing out in disappointment. “We should work on that.”

And Jared would be lying if he said that that doesn’t sound perfect – in a way, it does. An innocent boy with flowers in his hair would have sold his soul for a best friend. They could haunt the house together, play hide and seek at a cemetery, they could do anything. And Jared would take it.

But only because the other thing, the thing he actually wants, is definitely forbidden, seemingly unreachable. They are not _just_ boys, after all.

Jensen is not good. He might have been, at some point, although Jared still can’t help but think that his innocence was just a cover, just the surface for far more interesting insides. Whether that’s true or not, he can’t tell, chances are it’s just wishful thinking. Whatever the truth is, though, the fact that he is not good now is a simple truth.

There’s a certain glint to his eyes, teasing and playful, like he’s always hungry for something more. The more time Jared spends in Jensen’s company, be it in silence or gentle talks that reveal nothing, the more it shows. The twist to Jensen’s beauty is there, hiding just beyond his faded freckles.

And sitting like this, at Jared’s feet, and looking up at him, Jared can see it. He can almost see himself in those eyes, dead cats in spare rooms, bloody knuckles.

It almost doesn’t matter who Jensen was before, because he’s this now, and Jared will never be okay being just friends.

Jensen smirks as if he knew what was going on in Jared’s head and he pulls his hand away. He shuffles so that his butt is pressed against the tip of Jared’s bare foot. It seems that they are done talking, but the book Jared had been reading is now too conveniently placed over his erection, and so he’s left staring at the once-golden crown of Jensen’s hair.

 

 

The next month begins with Jared walking in on Genevieve and Chad kissing near the library door, just outside. Jared’s only luck is that they’re not the first thing he sees that day – he already had the pleasant opportunity to stare at Jensen in the morning as they talked about whether Jensen sleeps (he does not; he blacks out sometimes, though) and whether he misses it (he does not; he likes the quiet of the night, how no one expects you to do anything at four in the morning and how it’s nice to walk through the trees near his grave when everyone else is asleep).

He’s not sure when this happened – sure, the two of them waltzed around each other ever since Jared got here and it was about as disgusting at their general enthusiasm and their extroverted natures, but this is still a next level development. They are practically entwined together, and before Jared can cringe at it, he feels a ping of jealousy that he cannot have this with Jensen.

Sure, they talk. They are friends. They’ve discussed Jared’s collection of rattles and talk about people who store blood in jars. But that’s about it. Apart from that one starting touch in the living room, they haven’t even come close to each other.

His first plan is to walk past them without interrupting them, or maybe clearing his throat to let them know he saw.

But despite the lack of touching he’s experiencing, he has been in a stupidly good mood ever since they sat together.

“Hey guys,” he says as he walks up to them, and he know it’s worth it when they pull apart, Genevieve practically pushes Chad away, and both their faces burn in flames when they look at him.

“It’s not what it –”

“—looks like,” Chad finishes quickly and tries to rub Genevieve’s chapstick off his mouth without looking suspicious. He fails marvelously. “I just thought I’d walk Gen to work and all.”

“That’s sweet,” Jared snorts and nods at them, regretting that he wasn’t able to hold his serious face. “If you guys are so inclined, I don’t really need a supervisor anymore, you know.” He hasn’t since day one. He’s a smart boy. “So you can take a day off,” he tells Genevieve.

The blush on her face is incredible; it’s not even slight and rosy, it’s an angry crimson red.

Jared feels like maybe he should look away when Chad leans in to whisper something in Genevieve’s ear. Despite herself, she giggles and accepts Jared’s offer.

Jared is glad at the end of it. The library is a much more pleasant space once he can be alone there and wallow in it, just him and rows of books enveloping him in a thousand worlds. The day is a slow one, and maybe it’s because one month has crawled to an end and another has taken its place, and even small towns sometimes take their days off then.

The slowness allows him to skim dozens of books, sit by the computer and ignore it, read instead. By the end of the day, the tips of his fingers smell like the dry pages of all the old books he’s held in his hands today.

Getting home is slow in a different way; in the annoying, itchy way that makes you antsy, makes you incapable of sitting still. The sun is still high up in the sky but it somehow feels like the middle of the night anyway.

All Jared can think of once he’s not buried in a book, be it on the bus on walking home, is Jensen, and the slight shiver at the bottom of his stomach that makes itself felt whenever Jared imagines his voice, or his face, or the cold of his skin.

It’s dangerous, Jared thinks. It’s still dangerous, perhaps even more than it was before. But what can he do, when there’s a forever-seventeen-years-old boy climbing the walls of his home, when he likes it so?

 

 

“Did you tell them they were cute?” Jensen asks after Jared tells him about Genevieve and Chad, the first story about them that’s somewhat nice in a sense.

Jensen is lying on the couch, head hanging off the cushion, legs perched over the top. The exact perfect position for Jared to unzip his pants and put his cock in his mouth, if he could only do that. Like this, he just can’t stop staring at Jensen’s neck, how long it is, how pale, how his Adam’s apple bobs with every word he says. His forehead is cutely wrinkled and his eyes wide, so wide. Jared still hasn’t gotten used to them.

“Of course not,” Jared makes a grimace. He’s sitting cross-legged in the armchair, skimming through Jensen’s old herbarium once again.

He often finds himself doing this, just because Jensen thought it dear at some point in his life and it makes him feel like they’re not years apart, like there’s not death parting them even where years aren’t.

“Why not?”

“Because they weren’t cute. It was disgusting. What were they thinking, making out in front of the library?” It’s only half-true. In theory, if they are even half as attracted to each other as Jared is to Jensen, he can almost understand them. Jared, too, would have Jensen pressed against the wall if he could, and it wouldn’t matter much whether they were in public or not.

“I feel like the Zodiac killer might have thought something like that just before deciding which gross straight couple to kill next,” Jensen comments sarcastically, and even though it’s not something that should have warmed Jared’s heart, it does. Sure, the Zodiac killer was big around the time Jensen was born – but at least it means they both read articles about him as young boys.

He still remembers his mother finding all the articles and burning them in their backyard. She would have been safer burning Jared instead.

“Don’t make me sympathize with him.”

“Like you weren’t already,” Jensen argues back and they both laugh heartily, they both know it’s true, and yet Jared still isn’t sure if Jensen understands.

Sometimes, it truly feels like there are two versions of him – the boy with the herbarium from before and the one he is talking to right now, and he still can’t tell whether they blend together at some point or whether they’re completely different. He wishes he could ask. Hey, Jensen, did you ever think about ripping someone’s chest apart when you were still alive?

“ _You_ are cute,” Jensen says then, out of nowhere, and Jared’s head snaps up.

He looks at him, his ghost boy who can rest with his head upside down for hours because there’s no blood rushing to his brain, his boy with soft cold fingers, his boy with golden freckles and golden hair and stupid green eyes, his boy who is forever seventeen and older than God.

And he sees him look back, really look back.


	3. Chapter 3

That Saturday will be remembered as the day Jared actually gets the TV to work. And the moment he sits down to watch it, simply to feel good about himself not because he is interested, Jensen appears right next to him.

“Oh, I haven’t seen that in years,” he comments and nods towards the TV screen, tucking his feet next to him and digging into Jared’s thigh with his toes. “Nice.”

“Anything specific you would like to watch?” Jared asks casually, this is all so normal now, he wouldn’t even notice that Jensen isn’t a living breathing creature if it wasn’t for his coldness. The house looks rich and big and full with Jensen around, like there are no cracks in the walls to be repaired, like the floors don’t creak, like the paint isn’t peeling off. As if the garden was still wild with blood red poppies.

“Dunno,” Jensen shrugs. While his eyes are still on the television, Jared is now watching his profile and the way the lighting of the living room plays with his ghostly skin, once again amazed at how some parts of him stand out more than the others. His freckles, his green eyes, the pink of his lips, they look fragile but vibrant and Jared could stare for hours, contemplate their greatness, write poems about them. Sacrifice lambs just for those green eyes. “Are there any films about ghosts, other than horror movies?”

“Well, there’s _Ghost_ , for one thing.” Jensen snorts and finally looks to the side, at Jared. “You wouldn’t like it. Terribly romantic and melodramatic.”

“Oh?” Jensen raises his eyebrow and even though it could barely be considered a real touch, Jared can still feel how Jensen leans into him, his toes now underneath Jared’s thigh. Is this how ghosts flirt? Or do they bring you their bones in a bag to offer themselves up? Jared would like both, to be completely honest. With this boy, he would take anything.

Jared clears his throat. “Especially the ending with all the kissing. Seemed very unrealistic to me.”

“You have any experience with ghost kissing?” Jensen inquires and he reaches out, his dead-cold fingers brushing the hairs on Jared’s arm. It’s not the coldness, rather simply the touch itself, that makes Jared gasp.

How could they have gone days without touching when all they want to do is touch? Have they just been afraid that Jensen’s fingers would dig into Jared’s flesh and Jared’s would fly through air? Have they not noticed that both are acceptable?

They are so close all of a sudden, mere inches parting them, and Jared feels like it is going to happen for sure, that he somehow managed to be interesting enough for this creature that surely didn’t open his lips for just anyone. Even people with slutty plump mouths take a long time to decide who deserves their warmth.

Jared is not very careful with his words, he has never been. He’s better with his hands, with his fingers, but he’s mostly opted to stay quiet. He simply blurts out, “Not yet.” Clearly an invitation to change this. Jared gulps, yes, clearly an invitation for the ghost boy sitting next to him.

And thank God Jensen doesn’t ask whether he would like to try now, because Jared would simply have to nod like a school kid.

No, Jensen simply takes Jared’s hands. It feels like a silk ribbon tied around his wrist when Jensen pulls at it, getting up and bringing Jared along.

Jared doesn’t think any of it when Jensen takes them to Jared’s room and proceeds to lie down. He doesn’t question it, simply lies down next to him, sub-consciously shuffling as close to him as possible. At his mercy, always at his mercy, the uncertainty of Jensen’s motives really a thrill rather than actual fear.

Even Jensen’s kisses are ghosts; ghosts of thin petals, soft and cold, if Jared were to press flowers against his mouth. He is doing just that, or so it seems, because Jensen’s lips are rosebuds hovering above Jared’s parted lips.

“I killed my mother,” Jared whispers into the kiss and Jensen’s lips seem to freeze against Jared’s mouth.

Jared hates to pull away, but he does so anyway, and swallows the words as they fight to escape his mouth for the second time. Once was enough – he doesn’t think he could utter them one more time. They sound like a lie, but Jared knows them to be true. Maybe if he spoke them again, he wouldn’t be able to stop, would have to scream them at the top of his lungs.

Jensen’s lips are widened, his forehead creased with worried wrinkles. He breathes out and Jared catches the phantom of breath of his face. He imagines it.

Then Jared notices that the ghost’s eyes are just as wide in bright and pure fascination, and he looks into those greens for long seconds to cherish the lack of disgust or anger and disagreement.

“How?” Jensen breathes barely above a whisper, their lips still merely inches apart. Jared shivers, it runs down his spine and nearly jerks his body, but he manages to lie still. Silence envelops them because Jared doesn’t know what to say, whether to thank Jensen or kiss him again, even though it was only a ghost of a touch.

Jared realizes then that he got this all wrong, and imagined it all right.

The boy he saw in pictures? Innocent, with flowers in his hair? What a clever disguise it truly was, Jared now feels that if he cut the pages of the herbarium in half, blood would spill out of them. He can now see it all. He has always seen a blurred picture of it, or rather thought he was imagining it, but now he knows. Now he knows for sure. Keeping a leaf for every tree he found and killed a bug at, stacking plants he read were poisonous. Oh, what a clever boy, hitting himself with his empty teacup till a bruise blossomed on his collar bone, just because he wanted to understand pain and color.

Someone must have drunk him up, Jared is still sure of that, but he no longer sees the innocence that he thought must have caused it. He doubted it for a time, thought it was just a fantasy, but now. Now he sees the daring eyes for the first time, sees the mouth open in _would you dare?_ , he can now for sure say that Jensen willingly aimed someone else’s weapon at his heart.

“How did you die?” Jared asks out of nowhere, because _car accident_ suddenly sounds ridiculous.

Jensen is taken aback, half of his expression seems to fade before he recollects himself. “Why do you want to know? Haven’t you looked it up, library boy?”

“I have,” Jared nods, “But I want to hear it from you.”

Jensen sighs but seems to shuffle closer, as if closeness was what he needed, as if he could feel Jared’s warmth radiating off of him. Maybe he can.

“I was in the car with my boy,” he says and despite all, a smile creeps his way onto his face. “He wasn’t a very nice boy. I did die in the car accident, just like he did. Just a small little fact didn’t make it to the papers. He stabbed me in the stomach, twice. He always had a knife handy, that boy of mine.”

When he finishes, he pulls away and Jared watches, his eyes watery as he tries not to blink, not to miss any trace of the silent wickedness. Jensen pulls up his shirt, squeezes the hem of it between his desaturated fingers, and reveals his tummy, two wounds seemingly not connected decorating it. Jared’s fingers go almost through them when he reaches out to touch – they’re not exactly scars, not exactly healed, they look like they might still contract an infection.

“He started talking about leaving me because I was too much, he said. Too much,” Jensen continues quietly while Jared’s fingers hover over his pale, pale skin. “So I told him I would sleep with every boy I saw and never even think of him. I told him I would enjoy it, told him I didn’t care. And my boy realized I wasn’t there to fuck around. So he pulled out his little knife and ended us both.”

“How romantic,” Jared whispers, but in reality, he’s busy storing all that information, and he thinks, we’re not here to fuck around.

“So how did you kill your momma?” Jensen inquires again, his fingers leaving the hem of his shirt to let his tummy be inspected and caressed by eager fingers. He blinks lazily as if he could feel the touch, and Jared smiles.

“You are going to laugh at me,” he guesses, but goes on anyway. “She was nice. Liked keeping me by her side. Always. Wouldn’t let me out of her reach, so much I couldn’t ever hang out with others. If I wanted to. She felt like she was just monitoring me, barely a person. And then she started having heart problems, always seeing doctors until she didn’t want to anymore, so she would spend her days in her bed, order me around, and I realized she was really just a mean bitch who liked to manipulate me, and it was so painfully easy to smother her with her own stupid pillow.”

“Did you sleep by her side every night like you sleep by mine?” Jensen murmurs.

Jared’s eyes widen – they have never shared a bed, or so Jared thought, it never occurred to him that Jensen has always been present, just not making himself seen.

He leans in for another petal-mouthed kiss. “Yes,” he whispers.

In the bright light of day, they look like two corpses pressed against each other, even though Jared has never felt more alive. It’s just shy kisses, as that is all Jensen can do, the sort of kisses you would give your prom date before sticking your hand down their pants, but they will do. They will very much do.

Jared’s skin grows hotter as Jensen’s lips move against his, always brushing to create some kind of friction, up and down, and dreams of cold teeth sinking into Jared’s lip to draw blood are ever-present and haunting.

Sometimes, it feels like Jensen is barely hanging there, too focused on Jared’s mouth to focus on staying here, and it feels like Jared’s hands might just fly through air from the embrace, but as it is, he is pulling Jensen close, not fucking around, no, definitely not.

They stop just before Jared’s cock hardens as if Jensen knew and didn’t want to deal with it, but none of them moves for the longest time.

“I think the TV is still on,” Jared comments after all when he finally registers muffled laughter and loud voices.

He gets up to turn it off, because strangely, it’s the sounds of the real world that unsettles him, truly haunting to his ears.

 

 

Jensen has officially let go of his own arrangement where he followed Jared around but never allowed to see him. The next day, Jared wakes up to him sitting cross-legged on the bed, seemingly just waiting for the one that still needs sleep to get up.

It takes Jared a few seconds to register that Jensen’s hand is teasingly resting on Jared’s naked thigh, and his eyebrow is raised in a matching fashion.

“I stopped yesterday but I had time to think it through,” Jensen says instead of good morning.

Jared recalls the day before, the way they just rested on the bed together, kissing for minutes before stopping abruptly, and if either of them had it in them, there would have been forehead touching. The way they are, though, the abruptness, the sudden lack of Jensen’s petal-veined lips left a sour taste in Jared’s mouth. It’s still there, and it’s not just the sleepiness, it’s ever-present and rotting.

He wants more. More than a hand placed cleverly on his naked skin, even. So much more.

He looks at Jensen questioningly.

“I don’t know why I changed my mind, if that’s why you’re staring. I guess I’m still just incredibly mad I can’t touch you properly, and I wanted to reserve that right.”

“You’re touching me.”

“Can you actually feel it properly, or does it just click on here and there? Is it fading like I am?”

“You’re not fading,” Jared insists, although it’s true that Jensen’s touch isn’t as prominent as Jared would like it to be. He closes his eyes to savor it anyway, as cold and slight as it is, and he breathes out to please him.

Jensen’s fingers trail up Jared’s thigh all the way to the hem of his underwear, and thank God he’s no longer the teenage boy that insisted on sleeping in actual PJ bottoms with skulls on them. He would have liked Jensen back then too, but at least he’s easier to access now. If Jensen wanted to take a bite, he would only have to lean in, as said underwear is the only piece of clothing on Jared’s body.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Jensen coos sweetly, and when his hand covers the bulge growing in Jared’s boxers, Jared can’t hold back a gasp.

Slight and barely there in other places, through the warmed-up piece of fabric there is no mistaking Jensen’s cold fingers.

“I’m not lying to you,” Jared breathes out because truly, right now, there is no other thing as sweet as Jensen’s butterfly touch.

Jensen withdraws then, though, sits cross legged on Jared’s bed, looking at him with a gentle smile, almost too gentle for his face. It’s almost too much.

Another thing that is true: Jared does want Jensen to touch him properly, because this is nowhere near enough.

He wants bite marks to cover his inner thighs and he wants to cry out in pain as they are being made. He wants a slap, across his cheek or across his ass, he wants it to burn and to sting and to bruise him. He wants hickeys, he wants the wetness of Jensen’s tongue on them and he wants his teeth scraping across the wounded skin without mercy.

He wants fingers gripping him hard by the hips and turning him around. He wants nails like knives pressed against his back, he wants to give in to them and feel every scratch as it trails alongside his spine. He wants fingers digging into his skin, raw and rough. And he wants those fingers to tie his wrists and press them against the mattress to hold him in place. He wants to fight for space and he wants those pale hands to hold him down.

Above all, he wants to feel Jensen inside him. He wants to feel his cock, he’s an animal trapped inside a human body and boy would he claw and bite just to get closer, just to become Jensen’s prey. It’s okay if he dies in the process.

No matter what he wants, though – all he’s getting is his hard dick staining his boxers with pre-come and ghostly fingers caressing his skin, all empty promises and vague teasing. Jared can’t even be mad – it’s all Jensen can do.

With his eyes closed, he touches himself. He now knows for sure that this is not the first time Jensen is watching him do it, he is now sure that back then when he told himself he could sense someone watching there indeed was a someone, a very special someone at that. Despite all that, though, he takes special care to take off his boxers, and he bites his lip almost anxiously when his cock escapes from his underwear and flops against his belly, fully hard.

“Oh, how beautiful you are,” Jensen comments quietly as if not wanting to interrupt, and Jared giggles.

“Am I the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen?” he asks sheepishly with rosy cheeks, using the word ‘boy’ on purpose to hint at Jensen’s old lover, the one who drove them both off a cliff. He’s biting his inner cheek so hard it starts bleeding as Jensen answers.

“Certainly. Yes.”

Jensen’s fingers are back on Jared’s skin now, but he doesn’t dare to wander upwards from his thighs for some reason, always staying within the boundary of Jared’s hipbones, pointy and sharp even to his invisible fingers.

Jared sucks on the spot of his inner cheek that he bit, drawing more blood, and it crawls across his tongue, and he silently wishes he could share it with the boy sitting next to him in a stupid white shirt and ripped jeans, the boy with the forever-unhealed stab wounds on his stomach.

He finally moves his hand and his knees give out, his hips jerk. This is so much different than the last time he did this.

“Should I be silent?” Jensen asks above a whisper, as if holding his breath if he could only do so. It makes Jared smile, it’s the fake innocence again peeking out of Jensen’s shell, but Jared wouldn’t fall for it again.

His eyes shoot open. “No,” he says. “Talk to me.”

Jensen seems to press down on Jared’s skin because he can feel his fingers a little better now, it’s as close to hands gripping him tight as he will get, at least for now, at least for now. He can still taste blood on his tongue and the bitten spot is rough underneath his tongue, tiny bits of skin catching on it for a few seconds here and there.

His pace is quicker now, but still lazy enough to be comforting and not hurried, still enough to lull him and to help him turn his thoughts off, making it easier to focus on Jensen and Jensen alone.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Jensen says then and he kneels on the bed, sits on his heels, his knees melting into Jared’s side slightly. “I want to touch you so badly.”

“Where would you touch me?”

It reminds Jared of that one time he called a sex-line and then hung up hastily and with disgust when a woman picked up. It reminds him of that one time he called again and a boy picked up, and they talked about ropes and choking and Jared got teary eyed just thinking about it. This reminds him of all that, except it’s so much better, because his boy is right next to him and knowing that he would wrap his hands around Jared’s throat if he could makes it all that more amazing. Jared might just get teary eyed again.

“Everywhere,” Jensen states and Jared laughs, making him elaborate. “I would start with your arms, just to feel them, but then I couldn’t resist you torso anymore. Look at you. Do you like nipple play?”

“M-hm,” Jared murmurs and for a second he zones out thinking about sharp teeth closing around his nipples, licking at them till they turn bright red and sensitive.

“I wish I could do that,” Jensen says and runs his finger down Jared’s chest, it trails down like a soft drop of water or like an ice cube melting and slowly running down, river-like, till it gets to the delta of Jared’s abdomen. Jensen’s fingers circle one side of his crotch and then wrap around his wrist, just a cold remnant of a soft, light rope to guide him.

“Me too,” Jared whispers but his voice cracks and the word carries on in a whimper that slips from his mouth, soft and quiet and deep.

Jared allows himself to relax, lets himself think that Jensen is the one doing this, and as he lies back and rests his head on the pillow, he stops moving his hand for a second. He believes Jensen would do so too, just to tease him or take a break before starting to play with his balls or to lean in a lick a wet trail up his cock.

He can hear his heartbeat loud and clear in his ears, and his hand, while covered in pre-come, is sweaty as well, eager. Jensen talks over the steady battle drum of Jared’s heart.

“I want to take you in my mouth and swallow you whole,” he murmurs and when Jared looks, his expression has changed from soft to darkened and anticipating, he’s watching every Jared’s move now.

Moving his hand again, quicker now, somewhat shakier, he can still feel the silver bracelet of Jensen’s touch around his wrist.

“God, I want to eat you up. Just watching you is driving me crazy. I want to get my hands on every inch of you, I want to taste you so bad, god, I want your cock, Jared.” Jensen’s other hand is roaming around Jared’s body, little crystals tickling him in his softest spots, and his eyes have never shined like this. “You look like the most delicious treat, Jay. If I could I would melt into you and stay there, just to be inside you. Fuck, I want to be inside you.”

The image of Jensen lying in grass, with that stupid flower stuck beneath his ear, talking like this while the sun shines upon his freckles, is one that fills Jared’s mind up completely. He can just see Jensen’s naked body bathing in the sun, freckles standing out like emblems, he can just see every scar and every bruise.

His pace grows frantic, his thighs are now slippery with sweat as well, trembling in growing ecstasy, and Jared squeezes his cock down around the base. He almost shrieks when Jensen’s cold hand moves down to his balls and his fingers squeeze them, Jared doesn’t know how or why but he can feel the touch more intensely than his own fingers, and he himself is going to go mad soon, he is sure of it.

The most delicious boy comes without a warning and his eyes roll back, his hips jerk and his toes curl, just your typical boy from every porno you’ve ever watched in your parents’ basement. His bangs are wet with sweat, sea weed of a siren to call you from the shore, lure you into the depths of his very own ocean. Jensen will never be able to swim out after seeing this.

Jared’s eyes are closed and he’s not paying attention, he doesn’t even recognize Jensen’s touch this time as the ghost plays with Jared’s come, smearing it across his belly. His eyes, however, shoot open just as Jensen is about to bring his come-stained fingers up to his mouth.

The hot cavern of everyone’s mouth is a cold dark cave for Jensen, a cave full of dead, soundless rattles to widen Jared’s collection. He watches, without a word, without disgust, as Jensen tentatively licks at his desaturated fingers. His knuckles bear dozens of freckles, as if he was still the sun-kissed boy, even though they’re faded in color.

“I could barely taste it,” Jensen comments in a sad tone and he lies down next to Jared, no islands of inches parting them.

Jared’s breath is still uneven as he presses his palm against the stab wounds on Jensen’s stomach, he remembers the exact location still. Jensen, in response, presses his hand against Jared’s belly still covered in filth, now drying.

They kiss, and while Jensen’s lips still feel like petals, Jared now imagines the roses to be in full bloom; whore’s lips, red and swollen.

Jared’s inner cheek still burns; he can only hope Jensen can taste the ghost of blood on his ghost lips.

 

 

Jared is, thankfully, not sharing shifts anymore. He only see his colleagues for a few minutes tops, and that’s about all conversation Jared can take. It still lets him in on everything that’s been happening.

Genevieve arrives seventeen minutes early that day, which can only mean one thing – that she honestly actually wants to talk.

Jared shuffles on his chair. Sitting down has been hell the entire day – Jensen spent hours last night trying to finger him, and sure enough, despite softness and ghost-ness and whatever the next excuse might be, he is after all solid enough to touch things and to stretch Jared open. His touch being so light, though, they didn’t stop until the early morning hours and Jared’s ass was a wet mess at that point. So were the sheets.

It’s probably this restlessness that he tries anyway. “Oh, you’re here early,” he says with a fake smile. God, he can’t wait to go back home to that boy of his. “Can I go then?”

“Actually,” Genevieve sighs and she takes a chair that’s positioned near the first shelf, its legs screeching across the floor, “I kinda wanted to talk to you since you’re, like, the only normal person I actually know.”

And wouldn’t you laugh?

“Oh?” he mutters, shuffling once again, trying to grant his butt as much space as he can before looking suspicious. “Is there something wrong?”

“Well,” she says, sitting down on the opposite side of the table and playing with her dark hair. “You know I’m with Chad, right?”

“Right.” Jared nods.

“And I honestly don’t know how that happened, and it’s only been a few weeks –“

And aren’t you dumb? He asks both himself – because he honestly didn’t notice before he caught them making out that morning, he honestly thought Genevieve _was_ trying to flirt with him – and her, because how can she not know? They are the perfect annoying people to hook up.

“—and he’s mentioned moving to some bigger city a few times, because of more opportunities and more people our age and what the hell not, and I just – you’re the only one I know that moved. And I wanted to ask if you think if this is irresponsible to even, like, think about it, or whether it could be good.”

Jared’s insides shake with withheld laughter. He moved half a state away because he killed his mother and got away with it and needed a clean shield. He moved here because they were offering half a giant mansion, half a ruin, for ridiculously cheap. He moved here because he could, because he had nowhere else to go.

He’s met a few people, and the best one of them all is a ghost, has been dead for decades. The rest of them have been the punch line to their constant jokes. And now one of the rest is asking for advice, and what could Jared say other then I hope you go and I hope you find your mediocre happiness? How can he be anything but vicious in his snobbism?

“Hey, you’re young, you might as well try it,” he tells her, trying to sound sincere. What’s the statistical probability that someone like Genevieve and Chad will last more than a couple of months? Or better yet, what’s the statistical probability that they will stay together and grow unhappy side by side?

“You really think so?”

“I grew up in a big city and moved here and I’ve never been happier.” And the sincerety surely comes easier when you’re actually telling the truth. “A change of scenery can help.” Especially if it comes with a boy who will curl up in your lap and weigh nothing and love you and mutter cold words into your skin.

“I’m just not sure I’m ready.”

“If you break up, there’s a lot more space to disappear into in a big city,” Jared jokes but she seems to take it seriously.

She rests her elbow on the table and holds up her chin. “I just dunno. I kind of want to, though. Chad is fun.”

“So go for it,” Jared repeats yet again, slowly but surely getting tired of the ever-present insecurity. The topic of their conversation itself has shaken him up – suddenly, it seems parallel to what he’s been thinking about. “If I had someone and they asked me to go, I would go.”

“Even if it was risky?”

“Especially if it was risky,” he acclaims and even though Genevieve laughs, it places a heavy stone somewhere near Jared’s heart to occupy the space there and make everything just that bit more difficult.

“Aw, but we would leave you here alone! That’s not very nice.”

“I’m a big boy, Genevieve. And I could visit.”

And wouldn’t you, wouldn’t you just laugh?

 

 

The bed in the soft pink room is a sacred place; it is an altar to everything Jared has come to know. It’s the creaks of Jensen’s body and the watery-cold feel of his tongue against Jared’s skin.

It’s the amount of talking they do, talking about poppies and about growing the garden together, bringing the flowers back to life, the nature versus nurture issue they briefly gossip about.

It’s difficult to hold on to reality, especially on a day off. They are simply two boys losing themselves in each other, bringing the emotion out, if there is any left. There seems to be plenty, as if they both have been gripping it too tight and are now finally letting it go.

As difficult as reality is, deciding not to fight to grasp it is very easy. Just two boys. Momentarily, they can forget about blood and everything else, their vocabularies are wiped of these terms, their worlds are. But then there are the silent bite-marks, the persistent touch of both of them, as they, frustrated, try to leave bruises on one another’s skin and can’t.

They spend their Saturday like this, wrapped up in each other’s silences and movements, to the point where they both know what the other’s next move is going to be. Jensen never grows tired, but Jared does, around five in the morning he dozes off and Jensen covers every inch of his body he can reach, lays on top of him like a blanket. Jared falls asleep with Jensen’s cold lips pressed against the nape of his neck, feeling the coldness all around him. In a way, it feels like drowning, but Jared is too tired to fight for air.

Sunday is weird for both of them. Jared is comically sleep-deprived, and in the end, Jensen is, too, he hasn’t slept in years.

Hand in hand they walk around the property, Jensen drags Jared deeper into the woods where the trees’ shades are as cold as Jensen’s touches, and they seem to go on for miles and miles.

Companionable silence that has been carrying them as if they were in their own little bubble pops eventually, and although no I-love-you’s stumble out, the words come rushing in a wave.

“What went through your head, just before you died?” Jared asks, his back pressed against the bark of a tree, its surface uneven and digging into his skin. But it’s where Jensen wanted him and they’re as close as they were in the bed, and there are no questions that can’t be asked.

Jensen squints and bats his lashes, the edges of his body melting into Jared. “That there were worse ways to go. I don’t know. I don’t really remember thinking anything.”

“Feeling? You remember feeling anything?” Jared pushes, eager to find out more, eager to know more, to be more fascinated by the boy in front of him, if it is at all possible.

Jensen’s palm rests against Jared’s chest, moves upwards until his forefinger is pressing gently, like a stream, against Jared’s Adam’s apple. “I think I felt very calm. I was bleeding to death and my boy decided to go with me. My brain didn’t register the loud crash, so it was all very quiet, and I felt very, very calm. Do you want me to go on?”

Jared shakes his head, that’s information enough. He hoped it would be something like this.

Jensen’s expression changes almost immediately; it somewhat falls, the corners of his mouth go down. As if he wanted to hide it, he pulls his hand away and rests his forehead against Jared’s chest instead. It seems somewhat lonely, and that’s perhaps fascinating in itself. He cautiously wraps his arms around his ghost boy, finding out once more how easy it is to envelop a seventeen year old body with his.

“What about you?” Jensen mumbles into Jared’s shirt, nothing but a moody teenager wanting to bond. Jared might have found it unnecessary with other people, but it flatters him with Jensen. “What went through that beautiful brain of yours when you killed your mother?”

“All I could hear was my heart beating,” Jared answers immediately, afraid to leave Jensen waiting. “And I felt very, very calm.”

The trees’ shadows grow longer and thinner as long minutes pass and they are both thinking it: that this is just as calm as that once-upon-a-time-long-ago was. It’s infinitely better than I-love-you’s.

 

 

The question comes on another Sunday morning as they are lying outside in the shadow of the trees, only a few feet away from Jensen’s grave. They have ventured out shortly after sunrise.

To be fair, it has been bugging Jared for a few days now, since that conversation with Genevieve and maybe even longer, and he’s only just now gathered the courage to actually open his mouth and ask it. He feels safely hidden away underneath the trees and everything feels quiet. Everything feels perfect.

“Would you bury me next to you?” he asks quietly.

Jensen turns to him. “What do you mean?”

“If I died, would you bury me next to you?”

Jensen sits up and Jared immediately does the same, wanting to keep them both on the same level, somewhat equal. There are birds chirping in the trees now and if Jared looks up he can see a few spots where the sun has fought its way through to shine upon them.

“You’re not dying anytime soon,” Jensen avoids answering and shakes his head, tearing his glance away from Jared. Disadvantage of being in love with a ghost: you can’t take their chin and make them look at you like people always do.

Jared sighs. “Why not?”

“Because you’re not even twenty-five. Don’t you want to know what life is about?” He almost sounds bitter, maybe Jared would believe him if he didn’t know him better. But he knows, he knows Jensen would never let him leave. They’re not here to fuck around, as he would say.

“You were thrilled to die.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” But there’s this peculiar thing – it’s shame in Jensen’s face, isn’t it?

“I don’t want to fight,” Jared says quickly when Jensen voice goes up where it shouldn’t have, or rather, where Jared didn’t expect it to.

Jensen huffs out an annoyed breath and he uncrosses his legs to pull them up to his chest again. He looks like such a boy, so small, but he’s the most dangerous weapon in the entire world and Jared is doing the same thing he did – he’s aiming him at his own heart.

“We’re not fighting,” Jensen says after a few seconds. “I’m just telling you you’re not dying on me.”

“I would be dying with you.”

And really, what is this new kind of game, why would they play it in the first place? Why would Jensen ever be interested in it? If Jared were dead, they would be able to really be together, and how many people can say they died for the love of their life? Which Jensen is, Jared is not doubting it.

Jared brings his hand up to his mouth and with the nail of his thumb, he worries his raw-bitten bottom lip, scratching it open and pulling at the dead skin until it’s off and he can taste blood on his tongue. He plays with the dry skin, squeezes it between his fingers, and enjoys the soft burn on his lip as he trails his tongue across the new open wound.

“You’re lying to yourself,” he adds after a minute or so of silence and Jensen finally looks back at him.

He seems to be perplexed and surprised at what he sees, and Jared wonders whether it’s the blood caught on his front teeth or whether it’s that they’ve both underestimated each other, whether Jensen is only now realizing that Jared isn’t just playing along.

There’s a pause. “I don’t want you to die,” Jensen whispers, but even whispering gives it away, the slight shakiness to his voice, and they both know it’s a lie.

“That wasn’t the question I asked you,” Jared insists. “And it wouldn’t be yours to answer, and you know it and you understand.”

The decision is not up to Jensen in any way – sure, Jared would prefer Jensen’s hands to take his life, but he can do it himself just fine. He would just like to know if his bones will find their peace where they are supposed to, next to Jensen, next to his ghost boy.

“Would you bury me next to you?” he asks again, stubbornly, maybe this is why his mother always tried to handle him in her own way, because otherwise he wouldn’t budge. Maybe he’s a piece of puzzle found in the wrong pack. Maybe he won’t ever fit.

Jensen drops his gaze again, plays with the hole in the jeans right over his knee. Does Jensen feel skin when he touches himself or is it still just light soft cold nothing? “Please stop.” As if he couldn’t bear it, that he wants Jared dead and with him forever.

“Jensen –”

“I don’t want to talk about this. Stop or I’ll go.”

“Just answer me.”

Jared knows that asking for an answer once again is a mistake but he does so anyway, and Jensen looks at him with an exasperated expression on his face, and then he simply disappears. Jared can guess that he’s still there with him, but he can’t see him anymore.

He sighs and lies back onto his back, fighting the urge to apologize with everything he’s got. He leaves the battlefield victorious.

 

 

It’s strange how packed and messy a place can get after only a few weeks of living there. Jared’s clothes are everywhere, dirty laundry scattered across the floor, spare toothbrush lying mindlessly near the sink, his memorabilia all over the place.

It takes Jared almost half a day to take care of everything, to pack everything carefully, so the place looks neat and clean.

At least it keeps him busy.

They haven’t talked in three days. Jensen is as invisible as he was when Jared first moved in, but Jared doesn’t blame him.

He gets it, in a way. It’s one thing to not mind dying, but it’s different when you realize you want to rob someone else of their life as well. Jared has discovered this and known this feeling shortly before he killed his mother – he just didn’t have the audience to make a big deal out of it. He had to learn to coexist with his silent need.

And who’s to tell this is not just part of the game? Who knows, other than Jensen, if this is not just a test where Jared needs to prove that he means it?

His sighs could have filled all the cracks in the walls if they could by now, though. He doesn’t like Jensen avoiding him. His thoughts are too messy today, he needs to talk them out, but the only thing he can do is watch the clock silently and decide when the time is right.

It is ten minutes till Jared’s afternoon shift at the library starts, but he’s not going to show up. He can just see the shocked faces. There are people now who will notice that he is gone.

Despite that, he takes the stairs, feels the pull of the old carved initials in the old wooden windowsill, and he climbs the ladder to the attic. It feels like he can hear the dust fall even though he can barely see it descend through the rays of sunshine. Even the window creaks uncannily as he opens it and climbs onto the roof.

Strangely, he didn’t imagine it would feel this high. It feels like he could touch the sun.

“Jensen?” he asks, because he knows he’s not here alone, living with a ghost has thought him to notice when he’s not alone. It’s just a strange shimmer of air, a slight shift to it, as if someone weightless was moving through it.

“I’m here.” The voice is there first but then Jared can feel damp coldness against his shoulder and when he looks to the side, Jensen smiles at him. It’s like they’ve never stopped talking, it’s like Jensen never disappeared, even though his smile is unsure and small, almost shy.

They both know.

“I think I need your help,” Jared admits as he takes a few tentative steps towards the edge of the roof. The vast nothing-ness spreading out in front of him, the hundreds of inches keeping him from the ground – walking into it, jumping, even, would feel like stepping into a hellhound’s mouth.

He’s not doubting this.

He is not.

He is tired of petal-like lips and cold ghosts of fingers against his skin. It’s not enough. He wants to share the weightlessness, wants to be just as light, just as impossible to catch. He has, perhaps, always wanted it.

“You shouldn’t do it,” Jensen says, strange alarm echoing through his voice. His fingers have yet not left Jared’s shoulders, no matter how soft and unnoticeable they are becoming.

But they both know.

“We’ve talked about this, and I want to.”

Isn’t it funny, Jared thinks, that Jensen, the one who got wide-eyed and asked ‘how?’ after Jared told him everything, has doubts about this? His first fascinated question wasn’t in anger or shock, it was in complete and utter awe and if he could have, he would have licked blood right off of Jared’s fingers.

Maybe that’s what being weightless gets you – a heart that no longer pumps blood so you start to dream about it oozing out of a wound, pumping out of arteries and covering the floor, warm like your body hasn’t been in years. Jared’s already there, there won’t be much difference.

And if that is what the afterlife offers, Jared wouldn’t mind sharing it.

Oh, they both know, they both know and they both want it, no matter how hard Jensen tries to hide it. They both know too well.

“Have you ever thought about killing me?” Jared asks, his lips almost tripping on the words and forming _keeping me_ instead.

Jensen seems to shrink, curl into himself as the question surprises him. He blinks a few times but then his shoulders fall, and whatever he was going to say would have been a blatant lie. They’re not about lies.

“At first,” he mutters, and Jared wonders whether it was just sheer want to eliminate anyone who crossed the doorstep and invaded Jensen’s territory, or whether it was truly about keeping someone. Does he mean _at first_ when Jared moved in and repaired the broken walls, or does he mean _at first_ when he stripped naked for the first time in the bare morning sun of his chosen room and Jensen didn’t have the decency to turn away?

“Why didn’t you do it?”

“I hesitated,” Jensen admits, “and then I liked how warm you were, and how I could bring my hand to your mouth and feel your breath, even when you didn’t see me.”

“Have you ever thought about asking me to die so we can be… more?” Jared inquires again as slight breeze picks up around them.

All boundaries are gone. They are ash much like Jensen’s body is. “I have.”

“Yet you fought me when I brought it up.”

“I hate Romeo and Juliet stories.”

“You should have realized I hate them too. I want this because there is nothing else. You’re the one who gets me, and you’re dead. I should be dead, too. It’s simple logic. I’m not a Romeo and Juliet story.”

Jared takes Jensen’s palm in his and brings it up to his lips. He doesn’t understand how, but he can feel it in his hand and against his skin, as if Jensen was real, flesh and bone, capable of breaking. He kisses the life line that ended years ago, cold at its peak near Jensen’s thumb, and he breathes out. Jensen holds still.

It feels more real than Jared has ever felt.

“I know you’re not. You’re something else,” Jensen states, and Jared smirks, he likes it, he likes being something else. It brings him closer to the ethereal that Jensen represents. And he knows Jensen isn’t talking about his dimples, his words run deeper – all the way to Jared’s collection of rattles, of blood swaying at the bottom of a shot glass, of pillows pressed against faces and of digging splinters deeper into your skin before pulling them out.

“So push me,” Jared insists, taking another step towards the edge and having Jensen’s hand still in his, he pulls him along.

Jensen is now as wide-eyed as he was back then, his lips parted. He shakes his head slightly, but Jared can barely see it. He wants to do it, Jared can tell, no matter how badly he wants to keep Jared’s warmth.

Jared’s foot hits the edge of the roof, his sneaker bends slightly.

Jensen wraps his arms around him, keeps him in place when Jared sways. A soft breeze picks up and ruffles Jared’s hair. Jensen’s body is cold against his but Jared likes it, would drink it up and store all of him in ice cubes, would press them against himself, would let them melt in his mouth. He would let Jensen melt.

Jensen doesn’t push him, not exactly. He says, “I’ll bury you next to me,” and jumps off the roof with him, embracing him like a child.

Jared’s body trembles, but he’s not afraid. He wants to say, _Cross your heart and hope to die?_ , but he is about to, there is no time for words.

The fall is short, they hit the ground within seconds, and Jared is happy, so happy to hear the mighty crack and to be enveloped by darkness. He can sense Jensen disappear seconds before the crash, now it’s just cold air absorbing his body heat.

His skull cracks against the pavement, but he doesn’t know this. He is lost; their dangerous game is finally over.

Jensen watches. He smiles to himself, crouches beside Jared’s dead body and before he will take him gently to lay him in the ground, he tentatively buries his fingers in the fresh blood.

It feels like he’s witnessing the birth of a new world. The blood slips beneath his fingernails; he can feel how hot it is to his skin. Absent-mindedly, he runs his bloodied fingers across his lips and fascinated, he can taste iron, he can see red. He does the same to Jared’s lips, covers them in blood, and oh don’t they look pretty, and there’s a shift in the air.

Jared’s body presses against Jensen, firm and solid as it has never been, somehow it works now. They look upon the corpse in front of them and Jensen takes Jared’s hand, sticky blood gluing them together.

 

 

The house is a ruin by the time the family moves in, and the graves hidden between the rows of trees both look old and mossed-over, rusty and useless, seemingly empty. Bones rattle inside of them as the new occupants discover the house.

None of them can sense the shift in the air, nor can they feel two pairs of eyes following them around, fascinated with how alive they are, hungry for them.

The family can’t see the bloody joined hands, and they can’t see the smiles, but they’re there, in the cracks in the walls.

 

  


 

 

THE END.


End file.
